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 ENGAGEMENT Setting a Higher Bar at Work The tech industry has seen great change and innovation throughout the 21st century, with mor on the horizon. Employees have been able to take advantage of new opportunities and develop new ways of working and they are in turn making new demands on businesses. Those new models are spreading out of the tech sector and impacting employee expectations across many industries.

Here are some tips on how to meet these expectations:

Employers Need to Be Challenged to Improve Workplace Culture

There is pressure for employers to work harder to ensure improvement in many areas. One way to do that is by sup porting greater diversity across he organization and providing equality of opportunity and equal pay. Another is more so cial engagement, such as taking action on issues like climate change, or supporting fund-raising and other charitable activities.

Additionally, take into account quality of life, the ability to work remotely at certain times, or to fit work around parenting and other responsibilities.

We see a growing demand for workers to self-manage as far as possible, to take more responsibility at work and to access train ing and education to continually improve their skills. Y16

FOCUSREPORT:

MORTGAGE

LENDING In 2019, CUs have been riding a wave of mortgage refinancing driven by falling interest rates, but experts predict they will need to rely more on homebuyers come next spring. Learn how some of the CU industry’s leading mortgage lenders are gearing up for the change in this Focus Report. Y6

Home Equity Loans

Leverage the
demand for home
improvements. Y13
The
Homebuyer
Experience
Emphasize
face-to-face
service. Y11
CORE PROCESSING

redit unions, like many financial institutions, often seek a better ROI by using public cloud storage, but in the process expose systems to apparent vulnerabilities similar what led to the Capital One incident.

In the Capital One breach, a
hacker gained access to a faulty
public cloud containing personal
information, including names
and addresses of approximately

100 million individuals in the U.S. and six million people in Canada.

The Gladiator team at the Allen, Texas-based ProfitStars, a division of financial technology powerhouse Jack Henry & Associates, pointed out while public clouds work for some applications, they often are not a good choice for the complexity of hosting a financial institution’s entire infrastructure.

In addition, public clouds lack-
ing the necessary
security strength
typically place the
burden on organi-
zations to maintain
protection.

Sebastian Fazzino, director of sales operations for Gladiator and Financial Crimes Solutions from ProfitStars, explained the credit union security issues related to the cloud centers on three ele-

ROY URRICO rurrico@cutimes.com

Strengthening Security in the Cloud

Y17

Fazzino

CFPB
Suffers
Identity
Crisis

DAVID BAUMANN dbaumann@cutimes.com

he three branches of government have been battling over the CFPB That battle is far from over.

Policymakers continue to fight over how aggressive the agency should be, while attorneys haggle in federal court over whether the agency’s structure is constitutional and whether any of its actions are legal.

And in the latest wrinkle, the agency’s own director, Kathy Kraninger, has contended that her position violates the U.S. Constitution, but that everything that the three directors have done since the agency was created is still legal.

In letters to House and Senate leaders, as well as a brief asking for a U.S. Supreme Court review of the agency’s structure, Kraninger contended the CFPB’s director should be permitted to be removed by the president for any reason.