Trusted News for Credit Union Leaders
Credit Union Times
OC TOBER 23, 2019 | VOL. 30 | NO. 36 | CUTIMES.COM
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.
Under current law, the director
may only be removed for cause.
The fight involves all three
branches of the federal government and has created an air Y18
REGULATIONS