Before he was 40, Ralph Swoboda was named CEO of CUNA in Washington, DC. That was in 1986 and he held the job until 1994. That was when CUNA was a big association, with a head count upwards of 1400 because it provided a lot of assistance for credit unions with back office operations.
His next job after leaving CUNA was chairman of the management committee of the Association of British Credit Unions, based in Manchester, England.
Later, he moved to CUNA Mutual where he was head of international operations, directing operations in some 30 countries, from China to the Caribbean.
Now Swoboda is managing director of CUFA Ltd., a fintech based in Dublin, Ireland which creates lending analytics software running on big data for credit unions in Ireland but expansion into the United Kingdom and the United States is afoot.
Buckle your seatbelt for this wide ranging conversation that covers upwards of 35 years of high level involvement with credit unions, literally in dozens of countries. You will hear about differences between Irish credit unions and American credit unions, about the importance of community banks to US credit unions, and how the US payments system is something of a Third World embarrassment.
We wind up discussing the lending analytics tools Swoboda now is involved in and the timing could not be more ideal as many credit union executives awaken to the reality that lots of once solid loans on their books may be turning bad as Covid-19 takes its toll on many national economies.
Probably no podcast in this series covers so diverse a range of topics, countries, technologies.
You may not always agree with Swoboda. But you will definitely have fun listening in on this conversation.
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The news out of the Ritz London has to fry you: scammers have been calling customers with restaurant reservations and prying out of them credit card details that the scammers quickly put to use making online purchases.
The problem is that this may threaten all of us who dine out, even if we have never set foot in the Ritz and have no plans to. That’s because these scammers have shined a spotlight on a failing that may entrap us all.
The Ritz said this in an August 15 tweet: “We can confirm that on 12th August 2020, we were aware of a potential data breach within our food and beverage reservation system, which may have compromised some of our clients’ personal data. This does not include any credit card details or payment information.”
Where did the credit card info get into this? Apparently the scammers called diners with reservations and said, “Sorry, there’s a problem validating your credit card info to secure the reservation. Can we have it again?” Or words to that effect.
To use the language of the trade, the crooks – who apparently had access to the hotel’s restaurant reservations – used social engineering to pry the valuable info out of the cardholders.
According to the BBC, “One woman, who had made an online booking for afternoon tea at the Ritz as part of a celebration, received a call the day before her reservation.
“The scammers asked her to ‘confirm’ the booking by providing her payment card details.
“The call was convincing because it appeared to have come from the hotel’s real phone number, and the scammers knew exactly when and where her reservation was.”
The last bit is important. What it means is that the crooks gamed caller id to spoof the Ritz’s real phone number.
Number spoofing is so easy even a caveman could do it. Details here.
Never believe a phone number that pops up on your screen. It may be real, it may be spoofed.
So, where do you come into this frame? If there is a theme song among restauranteurs in this pandemic it is complaints about dining no shows. The Washingtonian headline tells the story: Don’t be the jerk who no shows on a restaurant reservation during a pandemic.
Even across the pond in England a celebrated chef won applause from his peers for calling no shows “disgraceful.”
As restaurateurs explain, in much of the US, restaurants are required to operate at a reduced capacity. In Phoenix, for instance, they are required by an order of the governor to operate at no more than 50% capacity. It’s 50% also in Seattle. Ditto Texas.
Many restaurant struggled to turn a profit pre Covid. Capacity limits have put more stress on them. And every diner matters in reaching break even.
A solution: restaurant gurus are advocating what amounts to a no show fee be slapped on diners who don’t turn up. In some cases it might be $25 for a two-top – but some restaurants are charging multiple hundreds of dollars, that is, essentially requiring diners to pre-pay for their meal in order to secure a reservation.
Here is where the news gets worse: restaurants are among the most common victims of data breaches and you can be victimized two ways. A crafty scammer who grabbed only a reservations log – which almost always includes a phone number – could recycle the Ritz London scam and call the diners asking for a credit card number to secure the reservation. Know that scammers are copy cats and when they saw that Ritz scam, they knew their next move.
At restaurants that require a prepayment there already is a credit card number in the file.
A round up of food service businesses that suffered breaches is here.
Big names are in the mix such as DoorDash and Landry’s which operates some 60 national chains including Joe’s Crab Shack and Morton’s.
But I ask, are you more confident that small restaurants won’t be breached? I am not. Indeed, I wonder how many already are breached and don’t know it (and, sadly, often the only way they learn about it is when an energetic fraud researcher at one of the big credit card issuers follows the bouncing balls and traces back a fraud outbreak to a small restaurant. I know one very large credit union that actually traced it back to a particular server at a restaurant).
Not surprisingly, a poll found 62% of consumers already fear restaurant data breaches. The only surprise is that the number isn’t higher.
How can you protect yourself?
Get a call from a restaurant asking you to confirm a credit card number and standard advice is to say you will call them back – and make very sure you are calling a publicly listed number for the restaurant or hotel. Don’t call a number given you by the caller. They may just hang up and move on to the next fish in the net.
What about restaurant prepayments? I understand the restaurateur angst. My standard suggestion is use a credit card with a very low credit limit. If necessary, apply for one with, say, a $500 limit. Do not use a debit card for this, never. You probably can claw back money stolen on a credit card. Your rights are less with a debit card.
Last to-do – if you make a reservation, show up – or at least have the decency to cancel a day in advance. I know that’s asking a lot in the Covid-19 era. But it’s not to much for a restaurant to ask when their survival is at stake.
When Bert Hash, Jr. took over as CEO of MECU in 1996 it was a $400 million institution with one branch that served municipal employees of Baltimore. In this podcast he tells about the institution he took charge of. It had exactly zero ATMs. It did not dispense cash to members – if a member wanted a withdrawal, they were issued a check and most went across the street to a bank to cash it.
Hash, who came to MECU after a long career with banks, knew there had to be changes. Within his first six months he put cash in the branch, installed the first ATM, brought in computers and prepared the institution for the battles ahead of it.
When he retired in 2014, MECU had assets of $1.3 billion, a membership of 106,000, and it had grown from one branch to 11.
I knew I had to talk with him even before I heard that story and that was because retired SECU North Carolina CEO Jim Blaine and Renee Sattiewhite of AACUC enthusiastically seconded the motion.
When I initially asked Bert, he momentary hesitated – did he belong in the company this podcast features? Of course I knew he did. But he is a decent, modest man and you will hear that personality throughout this podcast.
In one section he tells of taking a call from an irate member who believed MECU had made a mistake with his account. Bert agreed with him but still the man went on and after 30 minutes, the man was still threatening to move his account to a bank. Bert told him he was sure he would find at least one thing different at a bank. What, asked the man. “You won’t have a half hour conversation with the bank CEO trying to convince you to stay,” said Bert.
His is a credit union life and it is made all the special because, as an African American, he faced challenges in his career path and in his leadership of MECU. He tells his story in this podcast which is an especially personal document.
At the end, you will hear a podcast paste on where a recording of a call Bert made to me is. That’s because as he reflected overnight about what he had said when asked if he witnessed racism in financial services, he decided he had more to say. His perspective is thoughtful, nuanced, realistic. (Sound quality is different. But the recording is audible.)
He offers a brief summary of the 100+ year of African American credit unions, tells why he think them important in reaching out to the underserved, and offers a stirring perspective on the real credit union mission.
Tech note: this week the podcast switched to new software, Hindenburg Journalist. Forgive any glitches – they are on me.
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This is a summer of discontent. Streets in many American cities, from Portland OR to Phoenix to Washington DC are filled with protesters demanding more opportunity, and better treatment for people of color.
What does this have to do with credit union people?
Are you ready to jumpstart your credit union’s successes?
How about your personal success?
You want to know about the new CU2.0 Mastermind group – which is specifically created to help credit union and fintech leaders come together in small, working groups to hash out problems, solutions, opportunities.
Listen up: we are in a crisis. A health crisis and a national, indeed global, financial crisis. The impacts of what we now confront will be with us for years. You remember 2008. This is worse. And it will cause more disruption.
That’s why now is the time for a Mastermind group. Because it’s time for a big rethink and a Mastermind group will put this process in overdrive for participants.
Mastermind groups work. They accelerate success. In this podcast you will hear personal testimony about the power of Mastermind groups from CU2.0 founder Kirk Drake.
You also will hear from Dr. Patty Ann Tublin who shares her psychological insights into what challenges credit union and fintech leaders face today and the barriers they face in succeeding.
And you will hear about how these Mastermind groups will work, mixing small group sessions with larger ones and all done virtually, at least for now.
You’ve heard of Mastermind groups? Indeed you have if you have read the great motivational writer Napoleon Hill who is credited with coining the term in his 1920s book The Law of Success. He elaborated upon the idea in his later book, Think and Grow Rich.
In its simplest form a Mastermind group is for peer to peer mentoring – meaning the same folks get together, in person or virtually, on a regular basis and hash out what is gnawing on them. In the CU2.0 version, sessions are facilitator led to add more focus to every session.
That will speed the results and, nowadays, who has time to wait?
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
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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
How screwed are you if you own a timeshare in the pandemic – and know we probably will be in this for at least another year. Maybe longer. Maybe until 2024.
Timeshares aren’t cheap. The average cost of a one week timeshare (pre pandemic) was north of $22,000. Many also involved an annual maintenance fee that runs on average about $1000 and which you pay whether you use the property or not. In some cases, too, timeshare owners are hit with special assessments to cover extraordinary repairs and upgrades.
And this year some of the very most preferred timeshare destinations – think Kuai, Maui, the Big Island, Oahu – have effectively been closed to tourists and no one now sees that changing before September 1 in the case of Hawaii. Besides, who wants to get on an airplane and go a long distance this year? Not many of us.
I’ve long been a timeshare skeptic. This year, maybe more than ever. With tens of millions of us out of work and uncounted millions more working reduced hours for fewer bucks, a lot of timeshare owners are thinking that, yes, they are due a timeshare vacation this year but they are in no mood for a vacay and may not have the dough for airplane tickets. To say nothing about their not wanting to pay the annual maintenance fee.
Look, if you own a timeshare, I come not to mock you. And I know it is very hard to unload a timeshare – with a cottage industry of timeshare exit firms, many of which don’t do much good.
One positive note: the big names in timeshares (the usual suspects such as Marriott, Hyatt, Wyndham, Disney) all have offered some flexibility when it comes to booking and cancellations this year. The Points Guy ably sums up the high and low points for the main players here.
Cancellation policies also are a moving target. Here’s a Marriott Vacation Club update. Very probably every other major operator has issued updates, possibly multiple times, because the Covid-19 pandemic is playing out in ways most in travel just did not anticipate (and with far more devastating impacts than had been anticipated, such as closures of state and even national borders to most travelers, timeshare owners very much on the excluded list).
Wyndham has what looks to be a very fair cancellation policy: “If you need to cancel an upcoming reservation with an arrival date through August 16, 2020, you can do so online without penalty up to 24 hours prior to your scheduled arrival. Your vacation points, housekeeping credits, and reservation transaction(s) will be returned to your account within 72 hours.”
Yours is with a smaller player? Good luck. Every situation will be ad hoc, no two companies will offer the same deals, and you probably are advised to say a novena before calling. I mean neither to be cynical nor pessimistic – but this indeed is a situation that may call for praying for a special dispensation to help you navigate rocky waters.
Probably you can’t end your miseries by selling the timeshare. The ABC-15 TV headline (Phoenix) tells the story: Pandemic brings surge of people looking to dump timeshares — and scams.
What this piece – and many other stories – tell is the waters are full of hustlers and crooks who will promise desperate timeshare owners an exit for a fee…and they pocket the payment but frequently do nothing. The unwitting timeshare owner often has a few months of thinking him or herself free of the albatross – until demand letters seeking annual fees start arriving and that owner is still on the hook
Even ARDA-Resort Owners’ Coalition, an association of timeshare operators, has loudly warned timeshare owners to be on the alert for scammers.
There just is no easy out for a timeshare owner who no longer wants it.
Which brings us to good news for non timeshare owners: you just may be able to score a terrific bargain renting a timeshare for a vacation week, very possibly scoring an apartment for less than a hotel room in the same town could cost. Some timeshare owners just don’t want to use their week this year – understandably – and so they are seeking to cut their losses by renting the unit out. That can be a win-win.
And you know what: you will get to see, first hand and personal, exactly what’s involved in a timeshare. And if you like it? There are many websites selling timeshares put on the market by owners who want to unload them – eBay has a brisk market – and frequently you will find discounts of 50% and more off sticker price. Word of advice from timeshare veterans is stick with the names you know and, very possibly, you will score a terrific deal.
Ask Angela Russell, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at CUNA Mutual Group, a year from now what she would want to be able to tell us about progress made in the year and she did not hesitate with her answer.
On a personal level, she said, she hoped her son would be able to go for a run outside without fear.
Professionally, she said she hoped that the conversation about race and diversity and financial inclusion would be continuing and that credit unions would still be taking positive actions, rather than today’s focus on race simply fading away as just another fad.
Take a deep breath now. If you believe this will be a heavy podcast that challenges a lot of your beliefs you are right.
“We are doing better but we have a long way to go,” said Russell
But also know this: Angela Russell is an engaging conversationalist (hear her personal podcast, Black Oxygen, here) who laughs often but who also puts our attention on issues we might want to ignore – but nowadays we cannot.
The US is changing. We are fast on the way to becoming a minority majority nation. Credit unions that want to stay relevant need to adapt to this changing reality and that means, among other things, tuning into the changing demographics of their communities, seeking to engage minority board members, and seeking to improve representation of multiple races and nationalities on their workforces.
The podcast also mentions a book titled Evicted, by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond.
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
The nation’s airlines are at a crossroads – indeed, confronting an existential threat – that will decide their near-term fate. Will they live…or die?
It is all about the face mask.
Understand: a face mask probably will not protect the wearer. What it does is lessen the odds that the wearer will infect others. A mask protects others around you.
By now, most US carriers say that if you refuse to wear a mask, you will be kicked off the plane and may even be banned. Delta in fact says it has banned 120 flyers for refusing to comply: “‘Countless studies and medical experts have advised us that masks are an essential response to the virus that will help us reduce transmission,’ Delta CEO Ed Bastian told employees Thursday in an internal memo obtained by CBS News. ‘That’s why we’re taking it very seriously. We’ve already banned 120 flyers from future travel with Delta for refusing to wear masks on board.’”
Delta has also taken steps to define what is an acceptable mask (ones with exhaust valves don’t cut it, for instance). That deserves applause.
And then there is the persistent problem of self-centered, obstreperous flyers who insist they have a right not to wear a mask and loudly refuse to do so.
In some cases, they delay the flight and inconvenience every other passenger. A Delta flight from Detroit to Atlanta actually turned around and returned to Detroit when a couple passengers refused to comply.
An American flight caved in when a passenger refused to wear a mask – he cited his alleged HIPAA rights – and then the situation went into flagrant absurdity. Let Travel Pulse tell what ensued: “The aircraft’s captain did speak with [the non-compliant passenger], who said the crew attempted to kick him off the plane, but he remained in his seat. The captain then made an announcement over the public address system saying that any passengers who did not feel safe could get off the plane and re-book their travel without a change fee.”
Wait: so if I am a passenger who feels my health is compromised because a passenger believes he has a right to not wear a mask I can dramatically inconvenience myself by getting off the plane, throwing my schedule into turmoil, and, joy, I won’t have to pay a change fee.
If this were an Ionesco play I’d laugh. It’s not. It’s our lives and this is maddening.
Understand this, American Airlines: If that happened to me I wouldn’t want to change flights, I would demand a refund and I would use every tool in my personal tool box to collect my money.
Just don’t fly American: that’s the plain take-away.
Understand this too: Airlines have an absolute right to refuse service to any who refuse to comply with their rules unless the person is in a protected class. Doesn’t that mean people with health conditions that preclude mask wearing? Definitely. But that does not mean all who claim a qualifying health condition have one.
United, for instance, asks passengers who believe they have a valid condition that makes it impossible to wear a mask to contact the airline in advance and to be prepared to document the condition. Delta tells such passengers to be prepared to go through a “special screening.”
Which brings us to the existential problem: how many of us will just decide not to fly because so many seem determined to flaunt face mask requirements – and that endangers us. If we feel our health is significantly jeopardized by flying, we won’t, it’s that simple.
There are many more people who want to be mask compliant than who are determined to refuse to wear a mask. Drive away the mask wearers and that is a fast highway to economic oblivion for carriers.
Why doesn’t the White House step in and order mask wearing in airports and on planes? That’s exactly what the carriers have hoped would happen. Ditto flight attendants.
But that hope is fanciful. Trump has sought to duck and weave around Covid-19 from the beginning – even denying it amounted to a significant health threat – and it is highly improbable that he would demand mask wearing on planes. Yes, he backtracked from his mask wearing refusal and personally wore a mask at least once in public and in fact said mask wearing in public places is a good idea. But do not expect him to flatly insist that all of us who can must wear masks on planes and other modes of public conveyance. He won’t go there.
Not even if this refusal to act endangers the very future of the major US carriers and not even if it endangers the health of millions of us who fly and may find ourselves on a plane with a bozo who refuses to wear a mask because he/she has a “right” not to.
A few short sentences from Trump could stop all this.
Meantime, I plan to continue my flying abstinence. What about you?
You know the feelings – powerlessness, exasperation, maybe even anger – and know that these are typical for credit union staff involved in audits conducted by regulators.
Those audits are routine but for many credit unions they are an ordeal.
Why? Maybe 8 in 10 credit unions still handle issues that arise in an audit the same way they did in 1990, that is, a lot of email flies around to staff (“Handle the attached request from the auditor”) and everything is logged into a tracking spreadsheet.
Except some items never make it into the spreadsheet. Some emails go missing. And anxiety and frustration boil over.
Those credit unions are drowning in minutiae.
Here’s the life preserver.
Enter Redboard, a software tool that automates the process and, says Redboard CEO Brad Powell, the software pays for itself in reduced staff time alone.
Some audit software is hard to use. Not Redboard. When asked, Powell said it’s “so easy even a caveman can use it.”
He added that “we build our software on the same principle that Apple builds the iPhone,” that is, there is significant sophistication but, for most users, what they experience is how easy it all is.
Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.comAnd 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
Ask Chip Rogers, CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, when business travel will rebound and what he tells reporters is that a year from now it will be at 70% of normal, assuming a best case scenario.
He does not expect large meetings, conferences, conventions to rebound to more than 50% before early next year.
Color me skeptical, on both scores.
Color me deeply skeptical that it makes any sense whatsoever to assume a best case scenario when the White House’s handling of the corona virus has been about as bad as any dystopian novelist could have imagined on an especially dour day. There is no reason to expect it to improve, if only because the White House is heavily invested in downplaying the crisis. That’s no way to succeed with a health emergency and it won’t work this time.
When I talk with business travel experts – including industry senior executives – they always tell me that business travel will return, including large meetings, when a vaccine is available and has been widely distributed. Yes, there is good news out of Oxford University in this regard. But don’t be too hasty to hold celebrations. Prof. Sarah Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, told the BBC: “There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the Covid-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise.”
What early Oxford research is showing is that their vaccine is safe enough to administer to people. So far, so good.
What the research has not yet shown is if the vaccine can prevent people from getting sick with the virus or spreading it.
Assuming all goes well, even the Professor Panglosses among us acknowledge it will be early 2021 at the very soonest before there is wide availability of the vaccine. So don’t expect a rush to resume business travel and definitely not large meetings and conferences. According to trade publisher Northstar, “Just four weeks ago, 40 percent of meeting planners expected to hold rescheduled events during this calendar year, according to the Pulse Survey’s June 17 findings. With increasing uncertainty and rapidly rising COVID-19 cases in the U.S., that number has declined to 25 percent, per the latest results. More than half (56 percent) are now eyeing the first half of 2021 as the earliest time frame for rescheduled meetings, while 17 percent are pushing dates into the latter half of 2021 or beyond.”
The logistics of shoving out hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine just in the US – billions worldwide – are daunting. Smart money is betting that Q3 2021 is when vaccines will be plentiful. Sooner may happen but it just is not a realistic prediction.
The big, ugly fly in this ointment is that unknown but probably large numbers of us will refuse to get vaccinated. The anti-vaxxer movement has not taken a holiday in the age of corona virus. A recent poll found that 70% of us said sure, they’d get vaccinated. 15% said definitely not. Another 12% said probably not. And 2% had no opinion.
An AP poll produced an even more disconcerting number: just 1 in 2 of us said sign me up for a vaccine. The AP added: “The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 31% simply weren’t sure if they’d get vaccinated. Another 1 in 5 said they’d refuse.”
Either way, there are a lot of hardcore anti-vaxxers: 1 in every 4 or 5 of us. That means one in every four or five people on the plane you climb aboard may have abstained, one in four or five around the convention lunch table may have said no thanks, one in four or five at the happy hour may be ready to swill free wine but unwilling to get vaccinated.
And you will have no way of knowing because I’d say it is highly unlikely that we will see airlines and meeting organizers and conference hosts requiring a vaccination certificate before granting entry.
In a country that cannot mandate wearing face masks in indoor public setting such as stores there is no reason to expect a federal mandate that thou shall get vaccinated unless there is a compelling and provable health reason not to. There will be no mandate.
Which means 20 to 25% of us just won’t bother with the vaccine, which will keep the disease flourishing for some time and, again, nobody presently knows what immunity the vaccine will in fact deliver just as nobody knows what immunity having had the disease and survived is gained.
One third of the world’s population fell ill in the 1918-19 flu pandemic, about 500 million people. Maybe 50 million died.
We have many millions of sicknesses ahead of us, many tens of thousands of additional deaths in the US alone.
Whatever slim optimism I once had that business travel would rebound soon is on hold. Ask me in Q3 2021 if you should start thinking about business travel in general and large meetings in particular. Until then, put the carryon bag in storage, stop checking loyalty status in travel programs, and learn to love Zoom because it is how we will be getting around for many more months to come.
