Tech

by Robert McGarvey

Don’t think that SPAC is just another four-letter word. For increasing numbers of startups and entrepreneurs, it just may be the abracadabra that unlocks wealth in fast motion.

Continued at Startup Savant

 File this under trends that will rock the ground beneath your feet.  The next wave in financial services will be self-direction, says Vince Bezemer, head of strategy at Backbase, whom you know from CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 110 (and the companion, 111, with Wildfire Credit Union, a Backbase customer).

Now Bezemer is back with a big message: members no longer want you to tell them how to do what they want to do.  You can’t offer 90% account origination online but in the last mile insist a branch visit is key.

In a similar vein, the money centers banks no longer will be able to bully customers into using digital solutions when what they want is high touch analog.

There’s a revolution coming, warns Bezemer, and the FIs that thrive will be the ones that get the message that today’s member calls the shots.

And for the FIs that resist this, there’s the reality that at least some FIs already have heard this message and are charging ahead.

For credit unions, Bezemer’s message is that it’s not enough the digitize, say, 25% of your products and tell members that for the rest, come to the branch.,

It’s something of a different challenge from that facing the mega banks, where cost cutting and branch closures are accelerating a drive to push digital.

Wherever you are on the digital-analog continuum, there are warnings to be had in this podcast – and action steps to take.  But this isn’t a stern lecture, it’s a breezy, fast, fun talk about what financial services need to look like soon, like tomorrow.

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.

Hosted by Robert McGarvey

Anil Aggarwal is an entrepreneur who knows a thing or two about providing venues where executives come together and good things happen.  He was co-founder of Money 20/20, an event that redefined how financial services executives and fintech executives could profitably come together.  After that venture was sold, he co-founded Shoptalk, a meeting venue for retail execs and technologists. That was sold off. And now he is creating his next new thing, Fintech Meetup, and you want to know about this June 15-17 virtual event that will link financial services execs with fintech execs in double opt-in meetings that last 15 minutes.

Why 15 minutes? Aggarwal says he has found that’s the optimal time.  If the two parties find they have more to talk about they can arrange it.  Or they can part with smiles on their faces because it was only 15 minutes.

And you did notice these are dual opt in meetings.  Both parties have to accept for the meeting to be scheduled.

And it’s all virtual in our pandemic era.

Understand too that the tools and technologies are battle tested.  That’s a big plus.

Joining Aggarwal in this podcast is CU 2.0 founder Kirk Drake who has thoughts about why this event is a must for credit unions and free admission is just one of the attractions for credit union execs. There’s a link in the show notes to how to claim free admission.  

Know this. Your host is a grumpy, cynical veteran of too many financial services events to count, most of which were tedious.  I am a huge fan of the early Money 20/20 events so when I heard the guy behind Money 20/20 was the force behind Fintech Meetup my interest went from tepid to torrid.  

And credit union execs get in free.  

That is a great deal.

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

Want to know a magic trick to wrapping your arms around startup wealth? One word is the superhighway to startup riches today: fintech.

What’s that? It’s companies that blend financial services money matters with high tech, and this is the moment for that marriage. Forever banking has been a high touch sector — lots of human to human interaction — but buckle up; the sector now is riding a tech rocket to provide better services, faster and typically at a lower cost. The pandemic is the fuel for this, as more people do much of their banking digitally. Yes, the pandemic will end, but most experts now believe the changes it has brought to financial services will persevere because we have grown to plain prefer them. Why drive to an ATM to deposit a check when you can just take a photo with your phone?

Create a startup that makes our financial lives better, and it just might become a wealth machine.

Case in point: Stripe, a payments startup primarily focused on ecommerce. In mid-March, the company jumped to a $95 billion valuation and is now the “most valuable startup in the United States,” per The New York Times….

It’s worth noting that Stripe has been around since 2010, but only now has its valuation gone stratospheric. But those riches are why interest in fintechs has soared, and they come in a rainbow of shades nowadays.

Let’s take a capsule view of three different fintech startups: Nav.it, which focuses on financial health; DoubleCheck, a new toolset for lessening the damage done by an overdraft; and Breach Clarity, which scores data breaches by how truly severe they are and who is likely to be most impacted.

Continued at StartUp Savant

by Robert McGarvey

This is not an infomercial for Scienaptic, an AI vendor with a particular focus on lending.  

There are two guests on the podcast –  Eric Steinhoff, a Scienaptic executive vice president, and Kevin Willborn, vice president of consumer lending at $3.3 billion Gesa Credit Union.

Essentially you will hear that Scienaptic’s tools are a way to speed up loan decisioning and also to make the decisions very possibly better.  It’s hard not to like better and faster.

Willborn also tells what loans he plans to run through Scienaptic – lots of different kinds.

This is a tight podcast but in it you will hear how Scienaptic in fact creates better tools for smarter underwriting.  It’s a short course in the secret sauce of an AI engine.

Steinhoff also tells why he prefers to work with credit unions over community banks.  You will want to hear this.

At Gesa, meantime, the determination is to up its lending game and that is why Willborn took a look at new tools for smarter processing.  When he heard the Scienaptic presentation he knew he had found the vendor for Gesa.

 Right now, Scienaptic has multiple credit union clients but it is looking for more.

Find out more about AI in CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 138, a lively talk with CU 2.0 founder Kirk Drake. Link here.

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

 Start today, really embrace AI – artificial intelligence, where machines think and they are good at it when fed enough of the right data – and, guess what, you are already four or five years behind the leaders and that group includes most of the money center banks and maybe even a few credit unions.

Sounds gloomy? Well, it is, kind of, but CU2.0 founder Kirk Drake is here with a new book, FinAncIal, which aims to tell credit union executives what they need to know about AI and also what they need to get doing, right now. This book is not so much about theory as it is an action manual and, know this, AI is something every credit union needs to be exploring right now.

The good news is that there are many hundreds of AI focused fintechs that are actively hunting for credit union customers.

The better news is that those fintechs can be met through the CU2.0 Mastermind Group.  Drake talks a bit about the CU mastermind in this podcast – and he and a few members exhibit a bit of what it’s like to be in one in this podcast, #121.  An earlier podcast – #106 – lets Drake and executive coach Dr. Patty Ann Tublin talk about what a mastermind group is and how it works.

But back to AI.  The Matrix is now and you can choose the blue pill (blissful ignorance) or the red (confronting the sometimes unpleasant realities ahead ) abut the deal is that AI is the red pill and it is the future no matter how many blue pills you munch.

Why do so many credit union execs want to dodge the unpleasant uncertainties of embracing AI and the wholesale institutional changes it will deliver? We talk about that in this podcast and a lot of it is simply that credit union people are nice people but they sometimes don’t want to dive into changes that will discomfit many.

Except with AI there is no choice. It is coming your way no matter how tightly shut your eyes are.

In the podcast Drake tells why – and what you need to get doing, like this afternoon.

Buckle up, it’s a fast ride.

Listen 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

Breach Clarity, a startup headed up by onetime Javelin Strategy + Research co-founder Jim Van Dyke, could help cybersecurity journalists, bloggers, and PR professionals write more clearly about data breaches.

Breaches are commonplace. There are four significant ones per day, says Van Dyke.

They often affect financial information, such as bank account or credit card data, protected health records, personally identifiable information (PII), or intellectual property.

In 2020, the total number of records exposed in reported breaches exceeded 37 billion, a 141% increase over 2019. This number doesn’t even include yet 2020 data breaches reported in Q1 2021.

But what does that mean for individual consumers and their personal data in each case? “The biggest challenge breach victims face,” says Eva Velasquez, CEO of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), “is understanding the risks associated with a particular breach, and what steps they should take next.”

Data breach press releases from lawyers, for lawyers

Ask any cybersecurity journalist what they do not like about data breach press releases of, say, financial services firms or health care providers, and the answer is: everything.

Continued at Cybersecurity Writers blog

by Robert McGarvey

The recent Harris Poll numbers are a splash of icy water on our faces: three in five Americans believe identity theft will likely cause them financial loss in the next year.

That is a finding of a poll done for the American Institute of CPAs.

That number is up from the 50% who in 2018 said they feared a likely loss due to identity theft.

Partly, the jump seems to be pandemic related—there just are a lot more online scams in the internet ether—and partly, too, it’s because all of us are shopping online much more than we had, also because of the pandemic.

Immediately, too, blaming fingers are pointed at consumers. How dumb are we? How do we let this happen?

Continued at CU2.0

By Robert McGarvey

Breach Clarity, a startup from onetime Javelin Strategy + Research co-founder Jim Van Dyke, is about to change how organizations talk about their data breaches – with a loud emphasis on increased transparency, reduced opacity.

Breaches are commonplace. There are four significant ones daily, says Van Dyke. But that does not mean the public knows much about them. Ask any cybersecurity journalist what they do not like about organizational breach press releases and the short answer is everything. That is because opacity – saying as little as possible and offering few details – is the operating philosophy. 

One fact: confused and frightened consumers want more facts about breaches and how they are impacted.

Scoring the Severity of a Breach

Enter Breach Clarity which aims to do three things that are game changing: it scores a breach on its severity, from 1 to 10; it tells an individual what he/she needs to do to protect himself if caught up in a specific breach; and it will soon offer a score of an individual’s risk of being a fraud victim with scores ranging from 1 to 100.

As for the action items Breach Clarity suggests, they will be specific to a particular breach and to an individual. Some breaches set up some individuals for IRS fraud, for instance. Others set up some individuals for new account fraud. Still others often will lead to attempts at account takeovers.  There is no cookie cutter advice. Customization and personalization are what Breach Clarity aims to deliver.

A fourth thing may be even more game changing: Van Dyke, whose Javelin claimed many mega banks as clients, is marketing Breach Clarity as a value add for credit unions to offer to their members.  He already claims one customer – BCU (formerly Baxter Credit Union), the nation’s 56th largest with around $4 billion in assets.  

According to Van Dyke, although BCU is offering Breach Clarity as a free tool to members, it nonetheless forecasts a 5X ROI.  How? Reduced fraud losses – financial institutions, says Van Dyke, absorb the bulk of the losses due to data breaches and the hope is that an informed membership will be better able to take steps early to minimize fraud.  

Van Dyke also says there will be a reduction in member calls for help to call centers – and financial institutions relate that after heavily reported breaches they are swamped with SOS calls.  Fewer calls mean lower costs.

Phase 2 of Breach Clarity’s marketing plan is to expand the focus to national and large regional banks.

Consumers Want This Help

Van Dyke also says that consumer research done by Breach Clarity found a surprisingly robust appetite for such tools among Gen Z and Millennials.  Interest is also high – and expected – among Baby Boomers.

Where does Breach Clarity get its breach data? Via the non profit Identity Theft Resource Center, says Van Dyke, who sits on the ITRC board.

Eva Velasquez, CEO of ITRC, said: “The ITRC is honored to partner with Breach Clarity and provide more meaningful information to consumers and data breach victims.  The biggest challenge breach victims face is understanding the risks associated with a particular breach, and what steps they should take next.  Breach Clarity, powered by the ITRC’s data breach data, addresses this challenge by providing an intuitive risk score accompanied by essential action steps.  We are proud to be a part of a no-cost solution that brings much needed clarity to the victims of data breaches.”

The analytics that score breaches on severity and generate custom corrective steps are results of Breach Clarity algorithms. 

Three Steps That Must Be Taken

Here are three steps every organization that suffers a breach needs to take to prepare for demands for more transparency and clarity about breaches:

*Ditch the opacity in breach related press releases.  Aim for more transparency, especially around what data was stolen, over what timeframe. 

*Breached organizations need use cybersecurity writers to polish releases.  By all means, involve lawyers and cybersecurity technicians. But writers specialize in the communication skills that will add much needed transparency.

*Be transparent about the cybersecurity steps that the organization has taken.  Don’t give cyber crooks a road map but do disclose to the public information that will help restore confidence.

###

Hear a half-hour podcast with Jim Van Dyke here.  

by Robert McGarvey’

The headline in hotel trade pub Hotel News Now made me wince: “Personalization, Tight Budgets Dictate Hotel Tech in 2021.”

The sub-head was the face slap: Lack of Funds Hamper Tech Improvements.

Here’s the problem: pre-Covid most hotels I stayed in desperately need significant tech upgrades.

In the Covid era that has not changed. In fact, hotels need more tech because of Covid such as touchless, keyless room entry, apps that permit self-check in and checkout without interacting with a front desk, and – ideally – I want just about everything in the room controllable by an Alexa or Google device and, yes, I have both apps on my phone and both kinds of devices around my home.

Just as I can turn on a light, or a TV, without touching the device at home I now want that same interface in shared spaces such as a hotel room.

Sure, the Covid crisis will pass and probably by mid 2022 just about all of us who will get vaccinated will have been. Business travel will substantially pick up, possibly in Q4 2021. It will never reach the heights it achieved in 2019 but pick up it will.

But we’ll be wanting all that touchless and remote interface tools in hotels even once Covid begins its slow vanishing act because we have gotten used to them.

There goes a good chunk of hotel tech monies.

The money pile will definitely not be tall because hotel analytics company STR has officially declared 2020 the “worst year on record.” How bad is it? So bad that already bottom feeders are circling, looking to pick up failing hotels for pennies on the dollar.

Here’s the problem: there already was a stack of critical hotel tech upgrades that had seemed to be on permanent pause, despite their being needed.

Such as?

In case it has been so long since you have been in a hotel that you have forgotten the tech miseries they inflicted on us, here are the three worst.

Dramatically better hotel WiFi is necessary. Zoom recommends a minimum speed of 1.5 MBPS – but personally I want many times that.  I usually connect at around 350 MBPS – 346 this a.m. – via Google mesh and still I have recurring sound issues on Zoom.  

How fast is hotel WiFi? A website hotelwifitest says it has the data and, in a glance at Phoenix, the fastest wifi I saw was 26.9 at Aloft Airport.  The slowest was 4.6 at Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort.  

I cannot vouch for the recency of these data but it doesn’t matter. Those who have used a lot of hotel wifi don’t need a website to tell us the obvious: hotel wifi sucks.

Wifi at events and meetings is if anything worse than in-room wifi.

Remember, use VPN and your speed loss may be 10 to 30%, sometimes more.  

These speeds are abysmal.  Why so slow? Hoteliers have simply been reluctant to invest in the gear needed to up the speed – even as guests stumble with connections to everything from Netflix to Zoom to corporate servers.

We live online, in the cloud, and yet hoteliers are foisting antiquated and slow Internet at us.

It has to stop and, very probably, as travelers return to hotels one of the first things they notice is the lack of Internet speed.  Complaints will be loud, angry and possibly online (if the users can get online). Get in line and be ready to yell.

Improved cellular access is a must.  When my home WiFi goes out, I shrug, pick up a T-Mobile phone and create a hotspot (and the cellular data is free on that account).  How easy is that?

Except it often doesn’t work in hotels where bad cellular is a longstanding problem.  Here’s a 2004 New York Times article headlined: The Cellphone That Doesn’t Work at the Hotel.  

Nothing has improved in 17 years.

Often, too, the voice connections also falter. How often have you had dropped calls at a hotel?

There are fixes, they are known – but hoteliers haven’t wanted to spend the money and that was before the pandemic.  Their willingness to part with the cash for reliable cellular is no higher now.  

Maybe they still hope we will pick up their inroom phone and use it (although I cannot remember the last time I did).

So shall we must and will yell about bad cellular when we are back on the road.

Porous hotel cyber security.  I have written about this so often I have little left to say except that our personal data – everything from credit card numbers to loyalty account log ins – has been leaking out of hotels for decades.  

Hotels need to take this seriously and agree to a hotel safe data pledge.  

We need to yell, loudly and often, to remind hotels they are compromising our Internet security by not taking their own security seriously.

That’s three big tech steps forward, on top of the Covid related steps. Will hoteliers heed any of our demands?  What I can say with certainty  is that if we don’t lift our voices they will do the same exact nothing about these three tech frailties for a decade.

Speak up or suffer in silence.