Trusted News for Credit Union Leaders
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
Lending in a
Downturn
Don’t fear a
weakening
economy. Y12
Future-
Proofing Auto
Lending
Going digital is
key. Y10