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Credit Union Times

JULY 31, 2019 | VOL. 30 | NO. 25 | CUTIMES.COM

ecognizing the growing popularity of digital banking – and a coinciding decrease in branch visits – USALLIANCE Financial adopted Micronotes’ artificial intelligence-driven marketing automation platform to communicate with its members through concise, one-on-one conversations.

The $1.75 billion, Rye, N.Y.-based federal credit union, which began in 1966 to serve IBM employees, has over 118,000 members, including employees of American Express, PepsiCo and Big Blue. USALLIANCE has since expanded throughout the Northeast and now offers a full range of financial products and digital banking services.

“The increasing popularity of
digital banking – and the cor-
responding decline of branch
visits – affects
all credit unions
and banks. Fewer
branch visits mean
fewer opportuni-
ties for our team
to engage with
members,” Kristi
Kenworthy, assis-
tant vice president of e-commerce
for USALLIANCE, said. “This can
be an impediment to our mis-
sion of building a strong mem-
ber community as well as

AI Facilitates Member Conversations

ROY URRICO

rurrico@cutimes.com

Y17

MEMBER ENGAGEMENT

Kenworthy

Must Reads

INVESTMENTS

‘Pensionize’ 401(k)s and IRAs In a world of defined contributions, American workers have three challenges – inadequate savings, leakage (or loans/early withdrawals) tied to their retirement accounts and the need for retirement income. Plus, just half of all DC plans offer a way for investors to transform balances into periodic retirement income, with only one in five offering guaranteed lifetime payouts.

This situation prompted Steve Vernon of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Wade Pfau of The American College of Financial Services and researcher Joe Tomlinson to explore and devise solutions to “pensionize” retirement plans. Their work, first published last year and then updated this year, finds that only one-third of workers contact financial advisors, and most lack the necessary skills to convert savings into retirement income and typically have short planning horizons.

But research from the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) and Society of Actuaries (SOA) has found a “straightforward retirement strategy,” according to the three authors. “Choosing a specific solution that will help workers generate retirement income requires them to make informed tradeoffs between potentially competing goals,” they explained, such as “maximizing lifetime income; providing access to savings (liquidity); planning for bequests;

EMPLOYEE RETENTION

AI May Bring Bias to Benefits t is impossible to attend an in dustry conference these days without hearing about new applications for artificial intelligence, both on the plan design and recruitment sides.

But those concerned about diversity in the workplace said that AI also plays a significant – and visible – role in perpetuating discriminat ry practices. Baked into the legacy code are years of white programmer prejudices. And these prejudices se cretly push back against efforts to address racial and ge der imbalances.

The subtle discrimination ef fects of this AI coding are among the challenges faced by benefits experts as they attempt to provide benefits packages for an ever more diverse workforce.

In recent years, benefits diversity dis ussions have focused on the need to recognize the rights requirements of the LG BTQ community. And while the Trump administration’s policies continue to threaten that community, research shows that major employers continue to rap idly embed LGBTQ protections in thei benefits packages.

The new d versity challenges are both old (racial imbalance)

and new (AI prejudice). Address-g these challenges cannot be accomplished by simply checking off specific benefit options or hiring practices on a list.

With employers still e
gaged in hand-to-hand Y16

Data
Breaches
Plague 2019

ROY URRICO rurrico@cutimes.com

hile midways often enhance visits to the seashore, 2019’s midway brings no day at the beach for protecting personally identifiable information, with 713 breaches exposing almost 40 million reported records so far this year.

CU Times leaned heavily on the statistics provided by the San Diego, Calif.-based Identity Theft Resource Center to compile this list of 2019’s most damaging breaches – at least so far.

The six-month breach total exceeds the 2018 half point’s 668 breaches and 23 million reported records exposed, but is less than 2017’s half-year total of 791. However, the approximately 39,843,711 reported records exposed midway through 2019 is almost double last year’s 22. 5 million records and dwarfs 2017’s 12. 4 million records at the same stage.

The breaches break down into the following industry categories: • Banking/Credit/Financial = 44 breaches, 6.2%; 316,403 records, 0.8%

• Business = 313 breaches, 43.9%; 3,793,402 records, 9.5%

• Education = 48 breaches, 6.7%; 1,459,961 records, 3.7% Y18

CYBERSECURITYFOCUSREPORT: AUTO LENDING

This past March marked a turning point for CUs that rely heavily on auto lending, when the CU auto loan growth rate fell below the growth rate for all other CU loans for the first time in at least five years. Learn how CUs are adjusting in this Focus Report. Y6