Trusted News for Credit Union Leaders
Credit Union Times
MARCH 11, 2020 | VOL. 31 | NO. 5 | CUTIMES.COM
FOCUSREPORT:
CRIME INSIDE
CUS
Ever wish you could peek inside the mind of an
executive credit union embezzler? You’re in luck.
In this Focus Report, a former credit union CEO
shares how he orchestrated a real estate scheme
that landed him in prison for nearly 20 years. Y6
Growing
Deposits
Learn three
data-driven
strategies. Y14
Internal
Fraud Plots
Stop them before
they begin. Y7
S
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rc
e:
Bi
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li
on
P
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o
to
s/S
h
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tt
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Must Reads
DATA ANALYTICS
PSECU Refines Digital Skills
Harnessing big data through a
central conduit can help credit
unions produce dynamic portals
and dashboards, detailed visualizations, predictive models, automatic alerts and analytics that
can be disbursed to personnel
through multiple devices.
The New York City-based
Information Builders, which
provides business intelligence
services, announced that the
$6.3 billion, Harrisburg, Penn.-based PSECU chose its data and
analytics platform to extend
self-service decision-making capabilities to employees. PSECU
is Pennsylvania’s largest credit
union with more than 470,000
members.
According to Robert Burger,
PSECU’s chief data officer, the
organization selected Information Builders due
to its capabilities
relating to data visualization, strong
data access, governance and mobile
deployment – all
of which permit
personnel to support members with their data requests.
PSECU previously used a data
warehouse, as well as corporate
reporting tools, but executives
wanted to get to the next level of
maturity with enterprise analytics as part of their overall digital initiatives, which focuses on
member experience and performance improvements. Y16
Burger
igns began popping up
in 2018 that the economy would be at risk of a
recession in 2020.
In fact, Steven Rick, chief economist for CUNA Mutual Group,
called it in April 2018, predicting a mild recession in 2020 because credit unions would start
noticing savings rising faster than
loans.
“Lower spending leads to slower
economic growth
if not an outright
recession,” he
wrote in the April
2018 Credit Union
Trends Report.
“The loan-less-de-posit growth rate gap is expected
to remain positive through 2018
and 2019 then turn negative in
2020, marking the onset of the
next recession.”
He forecasted both loans and
savings would grow 8% in 2019,
with savings starting to outpace
loans in 2020.
He was a little off; it started last
year. Loans grew 6.6% in 2019,
while savings grew 8.2%. As of
Feb. 28, Rick said he expects loans
will grow 5% this year, while savings to grow 9%.
Currently, Rick sees positive
economic growth this year even
when factoring in the effects of the
coronavirus.
LENDING
JIM DUPLESSIS
jduplessis@cutimes.com
Econ Signs Converge, Most Point Down
Y17
Rick
Fisher
Crying Foul
Over Rule
Changes
TINA OREM
torem@cutimes.com
an Fisher is worried.
For a while now, the
president/CEO of the
Fargo, N.D.-based
What’s worrying
him, he said, is that
some card network
operators have been changing their
rules – sometimes without much
disclosure – and credit unions are
seeing their interchange income
shrink as a result.
The underlying mechanics are,
of course, more complex and convoluted than that, but in a nutshell, they go something like this:
Card payment networks and core
application processors are increasingly altering their network
operating rules to allow more
PIN-less debit transactions. These
are transactions that don’t require
cardholders to enter a PIN, but
that are treated as if one is used.
The result is interchange income
that’s lower than interchange
income from signature-based
transactions, as well as a shift of liability and risk back to card
PAYMENTS
Y18
