By Robert McGarvey

Hold the euphoria, pass the reality pills when the talk shifts to exploring when in-person business events will resume in full force.

And always remember: money talks, b.s. walks and in this case money is talking very loudly and not in favor of the resumption of many in-person meetings. Specifics on that towards the bottom of the piece.

First, however, let us marvel at the giddiness that is sweeping the events and meetings world as genuinely good news about two vaccines – Pfizer and Moderna – has been released and now there is a poll of event planners where almost two in three said they envisioned holding in-person meetings and incentives by mid 2021. And do note: that optimism was recorded before the upbeat news about the vaccines came out. I wouldn’t be surprised if now 90% would forecast a mid 2021 return to the good old days of meetings.

That survey asked 447 planners and most said we should be packing our bags and planning to attend a business event by mid year 2021.

I don’t believe it.

I would like to, I just don’t.

There are many reasons for my skepticism.

It starts with a strong belief that we will not have wide distribution of vaccines in the US until late 2021 at the soonest.  

Creating the vaccine is one thing. Distributing it another.  The Pfizer vaccine for instance has to be stored at -70 Celsius which equals -94F. I do not know about you but I have never experienced -94F and my understanding is that many physicians’ offices, pharmacies and similar places where vaccines would be distributed do not off hand have that capability.  Yes, they could jerry-rig a deep freeze using dry ice.  But will they?

The Moderna vaccine needs storage at -20 Celsius which is around the 0 F that a home freezer maintains.  It shouldn’t be a problem for the vaccine supply chain.

It also is very unclear that many states will have the money and the staffing to distribute the vaccines.  Federal funding and support has been expected but, so far, it’s a no show and the outgoing administration seems ever more detached from the business of governing.  Of course the incoming Biden Administration will take action – but two months also will have been lost and that is bad news given the magnitude of the on the ground distribution of vaccines to hundreds of millions of us.

 But then there is the matter of a lot of anti-vaxxer Americans – perhaps one in three – who will decline to get the vaccine. Just 58% said they planned to get vaccinated in a recent Gallup poll. The more who choose to sit this out, the more cases there will be.

So count me as not seeing a mid 2021 resumption of meetings.

Know I am not the only skeptic about meetings not popping up on the calendar anytime soon.

In Phoenix, for instance, the city owned Convention Center – which lives on business meetings – recently announced plans to reassign considerable staff to other city departments and to cut hours of part-timers.  These are painful decisions for this government.

The city said convention business had dropped 73% year on year.

There is no accepted timeline for when business might return to pre pandemic levels at the Convention Center.

New York City, meantime, is not forecasting a return of its tourism business to pre pandemic levels until 2025. A lot of that traffic of course has been business related, including many events and meetings.

This year the city will do about one-third of the tourism business it did pre-pandemic.

And then there is the sound of money talking, big money talking very loudly about travel – namely the nearly $1 billion Amazon has saved in lower travel expenses in the Covid-19 era.  Early in the pandemic Amazon told employees to halt non essential travel and halt they did, said Amazon CFO Brian Oslavsky in the Q3 earnings call.

Oslavsky speculated that internal travel – that is, for inhouse meetings – will probably return but, he said, it may not return to the level it once was.

Bill Gates chimes in with a prediction that post Covid business travel will be a reduced 50% rate.

I think that is spot on.  I envision a return to travel to support sales, possibly in mid 2021, probably by late 2021.

I do not see when inhouse travel will return.  I am not saying it never will. Just that I do not see a date where it looks likely.

And an awful lot of business travel has been intramural. Not just at Amazon but at every big company with multiple locations.

Some of that travel involved enough people for convention center spaces to be put to use.  But maybe not again in the near future.

Meantime, too, even the meeting planners in the poll cited earlier admit that virtual and hybrid meetings very much figure into their planning.  In fact, 72% said that at least some of their planned 2021 events will be virtual or hybrid.  

I’d say that sounds right. Like it or no, when we next meet it is likely to be virtually. For some months to come.

This is a special CU 2.0 Podcast where the aim is to take listeners inside the CU2.0 Mastermind group where credit union executives and fintech executives join together to explore new ideas, to review problems, and together – by sharing wisdom and experiences – join in reaching higher levels of success.

In this episode Ray Crouse, CEO of Parsons Federal Credit Union and board chair of NACUSO, Darryl Hicks, CEO of fintech FlexPay, and Kirk Drake, founder of CU2.0 talk candidly about Mastermind groups and along the way you will get a sense of the flavor of what a Mastermind group really is and how it works.

Consider this a glimpse into how a group works.

In this podcast you will hear personal testimony from all three on what they are getting and have gotten out of Mastermind groups – and both Drake and Hicks, longtime members of Mastermind groups, offer vivid reports of exactly how Mastermind groups have benefited them, personally and professionally.

Listen here.

Get your FREE ticket to the December 9th CU2.0 Fintech Mastermind Presents Showcase Day 2020.  This is the first of its kind event where CU 2.0 has brought together the industries’ top leaders form well known Credit Unions and paired them up with top Fintech experts in one place! Our subject matter expert will help you and your organization tackle the top issues we face today with unique master classes, tailored for folks just like you.

Get your ticket at Eventbrite. Click here.

Read up to learn more about Mastermind groups here.  

Hear the first CU2.0 Mastermind podcast here.  In this episode Kirk Drake and Dr. Patty Ann Tublin, who facilitates the CU2.0 Mastermind groups, talk about why and how Mastermind groups work and who will benefit from them.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

By Robert McGarvey

It was just seven or eight months ago that most air carriers dramatically reduced – often they eliminated – food and beverage service inflight and yet here we now are where the question for the moment is, is it safe to eat and drink on a plane? The related question: is it safe for me as a passenger if those around me eat and drink even if I don’t? A third question: is it safe for me to have flight attendants serving food and beverage and moving down the aisle?

The questions have come into focus for two reasons.  The first: many experts now are predicting a sharp rise in Thanksgiving travel – that’s just two weeks away.  A good response is to shudder in fear. But it nonetheless is the current forecast despite the facts that now every day sees 100,000+ new cases and just about every state shows rising rates and some show surging rates. Put more people in planes and airports and an unavoidable consequence is that there will be spiking Covid-19 cases. Yes, most surveys say drive traffic will be the main transportation mode at Thanksgiving (as it usually is) but many in aviation are predicting a bullish Thanksgiving weekend.

The second reason:  More carriers have resumed inflight food and beverage service.  For instance, on American Airlines flights between 900 and 2199 miles, “All passengers are provided a bag with a packaged snack, a bottle of water and hand sanitizer during boarding (not available on American Eagle flights),” reported The Points Guy.

Many carriers have done likewise. Some are resuming sales of wine and beer. We aren’t back to the old “normal,” but airlines are creeping in that direction.

Let me picture this. I am jammed in the middle seat in coach and to my right and also my left passengers remove their face masks and begin to chomp and slurp.

Why don’t I like that picture?

An oft quoted study out of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health noted that on the carriers that mandate mask wearing (all leading US carriers included: “The only time a passenger onboard is permitted to remove their mask briefly is while eating and/or drinking. Most airlines have limited the beverage and snack service on board, and/or have suspended it altogether on shorter flights, and/or suspended offering food for purchase. Some airlines only offer or sell bottled water or have available a pre-sealed snack bag for customers, which can be self-served or provided upon request. One airline has straws available upon request.”

The Harvard scientists seem okay with that but, remember, the study had significant support from Airlines For America, an industry lobbying group.  At least some critics have rejected the study’s validity on that basis.  

But now we are talking about resuming actual in-cabin service and that is a wholly new problem.  

A recent Washington Post “By the Way” story quoted “the associate dean of public health sciences at the University of California at Davis, Bradley Pollock, who said he would be more comfortable flying if airlines continued to minimize their flight attendants’ cabin movement. ‘I would not be happy if a flight attendant physically reaches over me to serve a window seat customer their drink,’ Pollock says. ‘I’d also like my row mates to keep their masks on as much as possible.’”

Infectious disease specialist at the Univ. of Alabama David Freedman told Wapo that in addition to seeing limits on crew movement, which may be linked to virus spread, “I would like to see mask off [time] limited to 10 minutes at a time, and not allowed simultaneously by adjacent passengers.”

That is the question.  Can you envision making a deal with adjacent seatmates where you divvy up flight times and mask free moments for eating and drinking?

In a perfect world, yes.

But not in this world.

In this world I live in a highrise with small elevators that can safely accommodate no more than two masked passengers at a time – and yet often several people, some unmasked, barge in when I am aboard.  I of course get off, abruptly but silently.  What would be the point of complaining about their selfish insensitivity?  And I take the steps down to the street.

Good exercise indeed and I forget my grumbles.

I couldn’t do that on a plane.

Personally, what I would do inflight is simply not eat. The food sucks (even in business class) so no big loss.

I also plan not to drink, not even on x-country flights, if only to let me avoid using the lavatories (and I have zero trust in them in the Covid-19 era).  

If we all did that, flying would be a better, safer thing. Especially if we all wore masks throughout our flights and airport minutes.

I do know I will feel more comfortable if my seatmates joined me in not eating and drinking and always wearing a mask inflight.

Will they?

Many of us are about to find out.

by Robert McGarvey

Branches are not going away.  That’s a firm belief of Nathan Rogers, a longtime financial services executive who has spent many years in shared branching – a feature he calls a significant credit union strategic advantage.

Yet now, amid the pandemic, many credit union executives are talking. about pulling out of the shared branching networks.  Why bother with it if nobody is using the branch?

Ask Rogers and he sees that thinking as short-sighted and in fact now is the optimum time to offer shared branching and thereby provide more member service without the expense of opening and staffing a branch that may in fact have an uncertain future.

Back up a step. Know that there are around 1850 credit unions participating in the CO-OP shared branching network.  They have around 6000 branches collectively and that is bigger than any branch network in the US.  Feast on that. The credit union shared branch network is the biggest in the country.

Along the way in this conversation we also explored the credit union shared ATM network – another industry advantage that often is inadequately explained to members and prospective members. And we discuss new trends in digital banking and the branch of the future.

Listen up here.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

By Robert McGarvey

By Robert McGarvey

If you don’t know where your frequent flier miles and hotel loyalty points are the bad news is that cyber crooks just may. That’s because, with most of us traveling so much less in the last eight months, we have become less focused on our loyalty totals – why check a balance that is inert? Add in the deep economic hits suffered by travel providers in the pandemic, and resulting slashing of staffing, and a perfect invitation was in effect extended to cyber criminals.  Call this invitation accepted.

According to research out of Akamai, “Between July 2018 and June 2020, Akamai observed more than 100 billion credential stuffing attacks, and more than 63 billion of them targeted retail, travel, and hospitality.”

Chew on the magnitude of this attack. Billions and billions of them! And Akamai numbers show the number of attacks increasing in the pandemic.

Criminals have gotten smarter about how to cash in on the full value of our points and miles. Used to be a cyber criminal did a simple smash and grab once he/she had log-in credentials.  He’d empty the points balance, cashing them in for readily monetized goods (Apple gear has been a favorite).  

Today’s hacker might still do that. But many are seeking out other ways to cash in on our loyalty.

Nowadays that hacker is likely to monetize the information about you that they steal in the hack. Usually there’s a name, an address, a phone number, possibly a passport number, often a credit card number, etc.  Said Steve Ragan, an Akamai security researcher, “Retail and loyalty profiles contain a smorgasbord of personal information, and in some cases financial information too. All of this data can be collected, sold, and traded or even compiled for extensive profiles that can later be used for crimes such as identity theft.”

Back up a second. In case you stumbled over the infosec geek term “credential stuffing” this is where where crooks try a log in that’s been stolen from one site – say from the Starwood breach where some 500 million guest records were stolen – at random sites.  Computers do the work. Crooks collect the winnings when the log ins work at more sites and often they do because we all know we shouldn’t reuse log ins but we all do anyway.

In recent years criminals have harvested bounties of credentials from various programs, Hilton, United, and American included as well as Starwood. There are mountains of travel related data already in the hands of cyber criminals. And the crooks are credential stuffing at a pace that has never before been seen.

Today, too, there are still more ways to monetize our data.  For instance: Now some hackers prefer to sell your account to another crook, inclusive of any miles or points in the kitty. Reports Akamai, “Hotel rewards are also popular, including those from major chains like Hilton. Accounts are sorted and sold based on their point value.”  How much? In its report Akamai shows an ad where one seller offers Hilton accounts with at least 10,000 points for $3 apiece and accounts with 40,000 points sell for $40.  Accounts with million point balances fetch $850.

Still others actually sell travel on the dark web. Noted Akamai: “Many of the travel listings on the darknet charge a percentage of the overall trip cost, anywhere from 25% to 35% — meaning a $2,000 booking on a well-known travel comparison/booking website would cost about $700 on the darknet.”

You’ve gotten the message: your loyalty stashes are in peril?  

Here’s what you need to do: Right now, go to your top travel loyalty sites and change the passwords. Use a password manager – I use Google’s but there are many – to generate a long, random string. And use a different password at every site. Then set a reminder in your calendar to change the passwords every three or six months.

That isn’t perfect protection. But it is pretty good.  

What about accounts with trivial balances? I ignore them for now. I have 2, or is it 3, nights in the Hilton program from a meeting I attended but I installed the app only because I have status via Amex and the status got me a few perks.  On a very slow day I will log in and use a random password.  But it’s not a priority.

The takeaway here is that our loyalty miles and points are under attack.  It’s up to us to protect them – and if we don’t they just may be stolen when next we look for them.

By Robert McGarvey

In a very few minutes—under three—on a slow Friday afternoon, I opened and funded a banking account with Lili. Lili is a startup that has won a lot of buzz (plus $25 million in venture funding) in the space of a few short months.

Read all about Lili here and here and here.

Finextra describes Lili this way: “Lili is one of several startups targeting a huge and fast-growing market: there are nearly 60 million freelancers in the US and Covid-19 has seen 12% of the workforce going solo this year.

Lili is offering these people an app that combines banking services with real-time expense tracking, tax tools, and financial insights.”

Lili, it is said, already has 100,000 users.

Frictionless Banking Is Today’s Must-Have

Think frictionless, niche, and something that sets out to solve an obvious problem (tracking tax deductible expenses). Lili wants not to be all things to all people, but to target a specific segment with a problem. That is brilliant new business development strategizing.

Keep reading at the CU2.0 blog

by Robert McGarvey

Go big or go home.  That’s the bold message from investment banker Peter Duffy of Piper Sandler and for some years he has been in the thick of credit union mergers.

And Duffy is here to say there’s a new trend.  Used to be, most credit union mergers involved a shoebox credit union getting devoured by a bigger one.  You know why that played out. Usually the small credit union had reached a point where its viability was questionable and the regulator, with winks and nods and maybe a shove, engineered a shotgun marriage with a bigger, healthier institution.

According to Duffy, that is changing and now very big credit unions – some with well over $1 billion in assets and healthy balance sheets – are talking “mergers of equals” with like sized institutions.

Why? It just is getting tough to compete with the money center banks who control an ever expanding piece of the financial pie. Add in the competition of fintechs and, suddenly, institutions with assets under, pick a number, $500 million? $1 billion? $5 billion? Are finding it ever tougher to thrive.

And $5 billion, by the way, often is the number that survival oriented big credit unions have their eye on, says Duffy.

Duffy also posits that what he calls Covid fatigue is wearing out many credit union senior managers and lots of board members. A merger to them may appear to be a great exit strategy.

 Along the way in this podcast Duffy throws out lots of Piper Sandler research findings on what it takes to succeed today.  Take notes. This is excellent stuff.

You won’t sleep well after listening to this – but you just may hear your path to institutional survival.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

A new FICO report vividly documents how badly most financial institutions are flubbing identity management, especially in crucially important new account opening.

Sure, credit unions have KYC and AML obligations in onboarding new members. But that is no excuse for chasing prospective new members away with clumsy, antiquated, and even hostile new account procedures.

Here are key findings of the research:

• “Operationally, lack of automation and the time taken for identity verification is an obstacle for over half of institutions.”
• “Physical checking of identity is required for digital applications for personal banking at half of institutions.”

Keep reading at the CU2.0 Blog

By Robert McGarvey

Even as the nation’s air carriers do the right thing they manage to screw it up.

Case in point this week.  First I saw a story that led me to want to applaud the courage of some carriers.

Then I saw a story that left me swearing at the carriers’ executives for their greed which threatens our health and defies commonsense.

First the good news: The WAPO headline tells it –  Delta, United and Alaska Airlines have banned more than 900 passengers for not wearing masks.  Bravo, if the emasculated federal government cannot summon the bottle to issue a mask mandate for public places – an action it should have taken months ago – it’s up to the airlines and some have stepped up.

I know flight attendants – understandably – hesitated to get involved in insisting on masks. They understood there are nutters who believe they have an inalienable right to go maskless (probably they think it is the US Constitution). But airlines and their flight attendants have done the right thing here.

And the carriers have upped the ante by issuing flight bans. Delta leads the pack – it has banned 460 passengers. United has eighty-sixed 300. Alaska has booted 146.  

American and Southwest, sadly, declined to issue counts.  American Airlines did tell the Washington Post this: “We expect our customers to comply with our policies when they choose to travel with us,” American Airlines spokesperson Curtis Blessing said. “We take action when that is not the case, but the vast majority of our customers have supported and welcomed our continuing efforts to strengthen our face covering policy based on the CDC’s guidance … we may deny future travel for customers who refuse to wear a face covering for the duration of this requirement.”

No, I haven’t an idea what that is supposed to mean and, for now, I won’t be flying American or Southwest anytime soon.

Which brings us to the two steps back.  Southwest Airlines has joined the list of carriers who say they will stop blocking middle seats.  They start stuffing coach on December 1 (and I do wonder how many passengers will fall ill with Covid-19 due to holiday travel).

According to a tally by The Points Guy the only carriers that are sticking with an empty middle seat policy are Alaska, Delta, and Hawaiian.  

That is inexplicable. We are not flying because we fear getting the virus in the air…and we also know two things that are helpful in curtailing spread of Covid-19: mask wearing and social distancing, the latter being all the more important indoors (as in an airplane!).  

Meantime, a seven hour flight to Ireland is linked to a staggering 59 Covid-19 cases in Ireland, according to a new report: “An outbreak of 59 cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) originated with 13 cases linked by a 7 h, 17% occupancy flight into Ireland, summer 2020. The flight-associated attack rate was 9.8–17.8%. Spread to 46 non-flight cases occurred country-wide.”

Of course I know about a new Harvard report that says, hogwash, air travel is safe. But I also know the carriers paid for the report and that causes me to keep looking for data.

Such as? Another recent report looked specifically at the question: does keeping middle seats empty impact Covid-19 spread. The authors’ conclusion: unquestionably yes.  Here is what they write: “We use recent data and research results and a probabilistic model to estimate the chance that an air traveler in coach will contract Covid-19 on a US domestic jet flight two hours long, both when all coach seats are full and when all but middle seats are full. The point estimates we reach based on data from late September 2020 are about 1 in 3,900 for full flights and 1 in 6,400 when middle seats are kept empty.”

That’s commonsense. When you sit literally elbow to elbow next to a passenger in coach your chances of getting any and all contagious diseases rise.  An empty middle seat is no panacea.  But it definitely makes the flight safer.

No wonder I have re-installed my Delta Sky app – and of course I have now downloaded Alaska Air too.

Note to self: change Amex Plat $200 airline credit from American to Delta in January.  Besides, Delta has spiffy new digs at Sky Harbor and there’s a new 7500 sq. ft Sky Club there too.  That, plus a tough mask policy and empty middle seats win my business.

 By Robert McGarvey

Do it for me. That is exactly what more and more credit union members expect from their financial institution. Especially around payments.

Amazon’s Alexa is smart enough to remind us that, based on our order history, it’s now time to re-order cat food.  Why can’t my credit union remind me to pay my car lease, my mortgage, and the Discover bill that is always due on the 15th?

The insight of Payrailz, a Connecticut based fintech, is that the credit union in fact probably has all the tools it needs to do those reminders – even to initiate the payments for members that choose.

Enter the world of AI powered payments.

Mickey Goldwasser, chief of staff at Payrailz, said we are entering into an era of “Do It For me” – and AI makes that a very possible reality.

A member forgot to pay his/her American Express card bill – but won’t that member welcome a nudge? “Usually you have paid American Express by now?  Is that bill due?”

Smart payment rails can also be called upon to actually make the payment.

The beauty is that drudgery is being taken off the member’s plate – and smart machines are running with it.

13 credit unions are in CU Railz, a CUSO that owns Payrailz. A few other credit unions, and a smattering of banks, also have adopted the technology. But, says Goldwasser, 90% of Payrailz business is with credit unions.

Size varies from small to the $12 billion Sun Coast.

Listen up. The time is now for smarter payments tools that anticipate what members want to pay and help them do it.

Do it for me is now a reality in payments.

This, clearly, is the next evolution in payments.

Hear the Payrailz podcast here.  

Dig deeper into AI and credit unions in earlier CU2.0 Podcasts – with Posh Development and Coalesce, both DCU Innovation Lab companies (our podcast with the Innovation Lab director Vasilios Roussos is here).

A recent podcast with Fahd, the CEO of Abaka, tells more about AI and how credit unions can sell smarter. 

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto