McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

By Robert McGarvey

Survey data from APCO Insight throws out this shocker of a number: 83% of workers forced to work from home say they miss attending in person meetings and conventions.

78% say they will attend as many such events – or more – as they had been once the threat of coronavirus passes.

49% also want to extend federal aid to convention centers and suchlike – venues that have been wiped out by coronavirus triggered closures.

Do you agree?

Understand, I am on record that there won’t be any conferences to attend this year. I am also looking at research data that suggest such events are fertile breeding grounds for coronavirus.

Of course I understand the anxiety that envelops event planners who are looking at a cancelled year.  Only cruise lines have it as bad – they likely won’t recover until 2021, if then.

Hotels, my guess is, will begin a slow recovery this summer.  But there are glimmers of hope for that business.

Not in the near-term for events and conferences in my mind, and that’s despite the  APCO Insight poll. My guess is that most of us will be gripped with fear at the prospect of sharing an event venue with hundreds or thousands of others. Sure, we may say we miss such events – I confess I do – but that does not mean I plan to go to any soon.

I do not.

What about the White House’s apparent determination to reopen the economy by May 1?

What about it?  The White House may believe it has the authority to reopen the economy but it does not.  That power primarily resides with state governors, and most of the governors of the biggest state economies will not trip over themselves to cooperate with this White House.  

The power also resides with us, especially when it comes to events, conferences, conventions.  When we said no after 9/11, the sector effectively shut and really did not begin to recover until 2002.

In 2001 it was a powerful fear of flying that grounded us. This year it’s more complicated: it’s a fear of a communicable disease. But the CDC said fears about air travel in particular and the virus are exaggerated: “Although the risk of infection on an airplane is low, try to avoid contact with sick passengers, avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands, and wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.”

The plane itself may not be that high risk for a typical passenger. Right now may in fact be quite safe because passenger counts are very low and airlines have instituted new sanitary procedures.  

Would I fly today? Yes. I would be mindful, I would wear a face mask, I would wash my hands a lot. But I would fly.

But then there are the real concerns about the safety of large gatherings – which most states now ban or discourage. And that of course means conferences and conventions.

Many other large gatherings also are in trouble. Right now there are whispers – that get louder – that the fall college football season will be cancelled, certainly for the schools that play games in large stadiums.  That is hundreds of millions of dollars – perhaps billions.  

If college football is cancelled – and it is tantamount to a religion to many – nothing is sacrosanct.

Conventions and conferences also are huge business – certainly to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago, Orlando, Anaheim, New York. But even to second and third tier cities such as downtown Phoenix (which is shockingly unpopulated, in part because there are no events now).

But the choice will be yours: Do you put your health at risk, especially in the absence of a coronavirus vaccine?

You and I will decide the recovery speed of the events industry.

When a vaccine is commercially viable, most fears will vanish – and good times will return for conventions and conferences. Some 70 vaccines are said to be in development, some experts are talking about vaccines on the market as early as this fall, and so there is plenty of reason for optimism.

But there also is plenty of reason not to want to see us rush into risky situations.  Social distancing seems to be working, crowds in some cases seem to be deadly, and when my life is on the line I am skipping the conference.  It’s the prudent choice, at least until a vaccine removes most of our fears.

What’s your choice?

Shane Butcher is a security guru at CUSO Ongoing Operations and lately has been busy helping numerous credit unions safely transition their employees to working from home.

The good news: credit unions that approach this methodically, carefully will probably be able to mitigate risks.

The bad news: credit unions that rush into this, haphazardly, with inadequate employee training may not.

One key: stress to employees working from home that they need to practice the very same security awareness as they do in the office. No shortcuts.

Butcher also warned that very probably cyber criminals are preparing to attempt to feast on remote credit union workers.  The risks are real.

Note, too, that Butcher’s OGO experience entails working with credit unions with assets under $100 million to ones with substantially over $1 billion. It’s a diverse customer mix but that gives him perspective on what is realistic, what is needed, what can happen.

“A lot of our customers are asking for help getting their remote workers online.”

His three word cure for a lot of today’s credit union security worries: training, training, training.

Butcher has significant concerns about BYOD access to the institution’s network – listen up find out why. But it starts with this: “we don’t know what’s on home devices” and that can range from malware to spyware to worse.

Hear the companion podcast on credit union remote workers with Kevin Langford of Georgetown Kraft Credit Union in South Carolina here.

Hear the Butcher podcast 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

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

Do what you do best and let us do the rest.

That’s the one sentence pitch for Exclamation Services, a Wisconsin CUSO that sees its mission as helping smaller credit unions – under $500 million in assets – thrive.

Every year hundreds of credit unions, mainly small, vanish – typically in mergers.

But what if those credit unions could hire a la carte services such as marketing, HR, IT, and back office – and in fact get higher quality workforces, at lower cost, because these are shared services via Exclamation.

Remember that: Exclamation is offering an alternative pathway to merger. A path that will let smaller credit unions survive.

Alan Bergstrom is CEO of Exclamation and, he said, Exclamation presently serves around a dozen credit unions, including one as small as $28 million and some as large as $500 million.

Geographic reach is mainly Wisconsin but the plan is to go broader because the Exclamation services adapt well to remote delivery.

This is an exciting option that just may help thousands of credit unions survive.  Sharing is baked into credit union DNA and this is real sharing.

Hear the Exclamation podcast here.

Mentioned in this show is CUNA’s “Open Your Eyes” campaign.  Listen to our podcast with Teresa Freeborn on that effort.

Also mentioned is a Ron Shevlin podcast where he said that community banks are making a new push into retail banking – hear the details here.  

By Robert McGarvey

Open your calendar. Search for events – conferences, conventions, trade shows and the rest – through 2020.  Delete them all. Every single one.

You aren’t going.

Nobody is.

Sure, the hyper-optimistic stupidity about a quick return to normalcy continues to pour out of the White House. Ignore it.  

There will be no return to normalcy until there is a vaccine and that isn’t happening until 2021, very possibly deep into 2021.

The impacts on large gatherings will be enormous – indeed catastrophic.

I had been more optimistic myself a few months ago, when I still envisioned personally attending late Spring events. All by now have officially been cancelled.

But there no longer is reason to think even fall events will happen.  Probably they won’t. There’s this from the Skift event manager blog: “the research uncovered how large events are at the core of how the virus spread. The Atalanta-Valencia soccer match, the Cologne Carnival. In the U.S., Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the whole of spring break in Florida are currently viewed as super-spreading events.

Masses of people in prolonged contact seem to be the obvious conduits for the virus’ spread.”

The piece refers to research by Prof Hendrick Streeck in Germany and it appropriately cautions that the research is in progress, that is, findings may change.

But for now the plain fact is that large group gatherings – in conference halls, churches, cruise ship dining rooms, even bustling hotel lobbies and of course airplanes and airport terminals – seem ideal breeding grounds for the virus.

The antidote is to stay away and that is what I will be doing.

Talk with people who have had what they believe was coronavirus and even the comparatively mild cases that I have heard first person stories about are miserable. A week or two of no energy.  In bed. Feverish. Weight loss of a pound a day seems typical and that’s for mild cases.

This is no flu. This often is a much more debilitating disease.

More severe cases of course entail ICU stays and possible death. There presently is no accepted treatment.

And there will not be a vaccine until well into 2021.  

Thus the headline on the AP story: “Virus Puts Event Planning Industry on Brink of Devastation.”

The frightening reality is that, really, 2020 is a wipe out for the industry.  Who knows how many small businesses – which the AP story points out are the engine for most events, from weddings to company picnics to convention center extravaganzas – will shutter and never reopen.  

That’s the other worry. Even once there is a vaccine, the events business infrastructure will be in tatters.  It cannot just pick up afresh.

My personal belief is that there will be a big, sweeping rethink of what it means to meet, and how and where.  I believe a longterm consequence of coronavirus and the associated economic recession will be a huge reconfiguration of meetings – and really it’s about time.  They aren’t much different from the first ones I attended a half century ago. Sure, there are Power Point shows, Skype call in guests, and a few other nods to technology.

But mainly a 2020 event is still a 1970 event and that makes no sense.

It’s time to rethink events.  Eliminate most in person events.  Add a new life to the in person events that survive.

It’s will be a brave new world and, honestly, it’s about time in the meetings world.

—-

H/T Joe Brancatelli.  There I was, pondering the mysteries of making a face mask as I planned a trip to the pharmacy across the street.  I do not sew. I have no construction or painter masks. And then I read Brancatelli’s reminder that the eye masks in airline amenity kits make dandy facemasks.  A quick search found a never opened Continental Air kit, also a Finnair kit and I was in business. No needles, no thread,.  Probably I have more such kits – which I pretty much never used but for some reason often took with me – so my mask problem is solved.

By Robert McGarvey

In other news on March 31, Marriott disclosed what it called a “Property System Incident.”

We interrupt that to report a shoplifting at a dollar store, cutting now to the live police feed of this dramatic story.

You probably missed the Marriott news because it was an otherwise busy day with acres of – grim – Covid-19 reporting and with projected US death totals now reaching into six figures, shortages looming for ventilators, inexplicable mask shortages, and, well, who really had the bandwidth to process yet another report of a hotel data breach?

Not us.

Marriott doubtless hoped you would miss it because the company’s statement is calculatedly blah.  It says just about nothing and that’s tipped off by the word “incident” in the headline. Meaning absolutely nothing.

But the Marriott statement does note the personal info of about 5.2 million Marriott loyalty members apparently was compromised in the “incident.”  It elaborated:

“At this point, the company believes that the following information may have been involved for up to approximately 5.2 million guests, although not all of this information was present for every guest involved:

* contact details (e.g., name, mailing address, email address, and phone number)

* loyalty account information (e.g., account number and points balance, but not passwords)

* additional personal details (e.g., company, gender, and birthday day and month)

* partnerships and affiliations (e.g., linked airline loyalty programs and numbers)

* preferences (e.g., stay/room preferences and language preference).”

Marriott added: “Although Marriott’s investigation is ongoing, the company currently has no reason to believe that the information involved included Marriott Bonvoy account passwords or PINs, payment card information, passport information, national IDs, or driver’s license numbers.”

The real take away from this: the continuing indifference of the hotel sector to protection of guest data. How many breaches have to occur – from Trump hotels to Starwood and Hilton and just about everybody else? How many stories have to be written? Somebody needs to say, this is a problem.  It needs to be fixed.

Actually we’ve been saying all for that for some years now and nothing has changed.

We need a new campaign.  Complaining about hotelier incompetence is not enough.

Real change will start with us. 

We share culpability. We put up with it.  For some time I have suggested that probably the only safe way to stay in a hotel is with a bogus travel credential (a novelty Irish driver’s license for instance) and using a credit card paired to the bogus ID. Then annually burn that identity and create a new one.

Shop for ID online. Here for instance.  Note: I am not suggesting using any such ID to drive a car or any similar activity – many of which might be illegal.  Rather, I am suggesting we take a trick from the oldime restaurant critic’s playbook – from the era where they practiced anonymity – when every big newspaper and magazine handed out credit cards in bogus names to their critics so they could make anonymous reservations. As long as the bills got paid, no harm done.

We’d be a lot safer in hotels if we did something similar today.

A lot of work? Yeah. But so is the persistent credit monitoring we all do because we have been involved in so many data breaches, many involving hotels and restaurants.

In Marriott’s defense this breach was detected quickly by hotel standards – often years go by. In this case, just months.

But worrisome is that two employee accounts were apparently the tools.  And that they were used to perpetrate large amounts of data exfiltration that should have been detected and stopped quickly.  Screens against substantial data exfiltration just are good practice in well run organizations.

Not apparently in Marriott.

So what should you do now?  Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate with Comparitech, said: “The biggest threat Marriott guests might face as a result of this breach is targeted phishing. Guests should be on the lookout for targeted messages from scammers posing as Marriott or a related company. Don’t click on links or attachments in unsolicited emails. Check email addresses and don’t just trust display names. If you’re uncertain as to whether a message is legitimate or not, ask Marriott using contact information found through Google.”

Remember that. If you are among the 5.2 million you will begin getting targeted phishing emails as soon as the data sells on the dark web. And it will go on for years.

That novelty driver’s license is making ever more sense? 

It’s up to us to protect ourselves.  It’s become that obvious.

by Robert McGarvey

The Global Business Travel Association had to know so it popped the question we have all been pondering: when will we be back in full business travel mode?

The organization conducted a poll and it found – no surprise – that coronavirus had wiped out lots of business travel. One metric makes the impact clear: asked what percentage of trips that had been slated for March were cancelled, the answer was 89%.

41% said all business trips had been canceled. 53% said “essential” travel was still allowed.

Exactly 0 percent said their organization had not canceled or suspended business trips.

We are in a no travel mode and the question becomes, when will something approaching ordinary business travel levels resume?

GBTA asked exactly that question: “When do you expect your business travelers to resume regular travel to the countries or regions that have been canceled or suspended due to the Coronavirus? Do you expect travel to resume within the next. . . “

Understand, 40% said they were unsure.

0% said more than 12 monhs.

1% said 12 months.

The eye popper of a number is that 40% said within three months.

17% said within six months.

That makes 57%, a solid majority, who believe something approaching normalcy in business travel will resume by September.

What do you think?

Color me skeptical.

Here’s a metric on the impact of 9-11: “In August 2001, the month just prior to the attacks, U.S. airlines boarded 56.3 million passengers for domestic service, a number that plummeted to just 30 million in September. And for two anxious days after the attacks, the passenger count was zero. It would take three years for carriers to once again reach the 56 million mark.”

Many factors came into play in the aftermath of 9-11: real fear of flying coupled with an economic downturn but, in many respects, we have the same issues at work now. Some people are afraid to fly because of fear of catching coronavirus and then there is the near economic malaise that the nation is slumping into.

Airlines again are taking it on the chin in the coronavirus age. Best guesses are that they have years of pain in front of them.

Then there is the hotel question. How many will be closed? How many will be enlisted into service as homeless shelters? Perhaps as makeshift hospitals?

Some guesses are that half of all hotels in the US will close for some period due to coronavirus.

It will take some time to re-open as a hotel. Staff needs to be recruited. Trained. The big brands probably will navigate these issues with some skill. Many independents won’t. Many independents – which comprise 40% of the US hotel stock – probably will not reopen soon.

Meantime, other, transformational changes that are reshaping business travel are afoot. For instance: many of us – perforce – are discovering the ease and effectiveness of meetings via Zoom and similar tools.

Do a few Zoom meetings and you may not see the need for oldfashioned face to face. Will Zoom replace the traditional face to face sales call? Probably not. But similar tools will eliminate the need for many face to face meetings.

And the hustle and bustle of traditional events seems ever more dated to me. I do not expect a quick rebound in events business, mainly because so much of how we come together just is oldfashioned and no longer appropriate.

One GBTA question hints at the possibility of broad impacts: Do you think the coronavirus will change the way your company conducts business
once there is no more threat from the disease?

54% said yes. That’s the number to watch. There are many reasons for business travel to undergo a transformation and one factor is the generational shift of the travel burden from Baby Boomers to Millennials and it just is not clear that Millennials want to travel the way Boomers have.

Add it up and I am profoundly skeptical that business travel will rebound in three months. My guess is that we will see an uptick in the fall and probably spring 2021 is when we can begin to think something akin to “normalcy” has returned. That’s about a year from now.

And as for event design, watch for huge changes. It’s overdue. And now it will flourish. Be very skeptical about signing up for distant events – many just won’t be happening.

The era of business travel change is upon us. And that’s a good thing imo.

What do you think?

Suddenly credit unions across the nation are ordering employees home, as part of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.  And that is triggering a tidal wave of worries about the possible cyber insecurities that will result as newly empowered employees log into the credit union networks.

Hitherto, at many credit unions, the workers who had home access to the network were mainly senior, experienced, and both well trained and well equipped.

Today’s newly drafted home workers often lack the right equipment and their training may have been brisk.

Global cyber criminals are said to be eyeing these workers the way a hungry lioness eyes a slow wildebeest in the Serengeti.

 That’s why you want to hear from Kevin Langford, chief information officer at $140 million Georgetown Kraft Credit Union in South Carolina.

Langford has trained many workers in the secrets of safe cyber work at home and here he tells what every credit union needs to be doing.

This topic is so big that next week we will post another podcast on the same theme with Shane Butcher, senior solutions and security architect at CUSO Ongoing Operations. 

You need to listen to both.  The risks are extraordinary today and here are solid suggestions for navigating turbulence securely.

The UPS scam info is here.

The dropped USB drive info is here.

Listen to this podcast 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

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

Who will win: community banks or credit unions?

War on.

A keen observer is Ron Shevlin, diretor of research at Cornerstone Advisors and author of a new report, What’s Going on in Banking 2020.  It’s a data rich report. Download it, read it.

Shevlin was an early guest on the CU2.0 Podcast – Episode 21 – and he’s back in this wide ranging conversation about credit unions, technology, and ways to win.

For instance: can community banks regain a hold on retail banking, a niche they ceded to credit unions some years ago?

Can credit unions succeed at taking business banking from community banks?

A growing trend, per Shevlin, is that consumers have multiple checking account relationships that they seek to optimize – and a key is how easy it is to quickly move money around today.  What does your institution know about this?

A credit union failing is a persistent belief that “our success is our people,” said Shevlin.

Millennials are more focused on technology.

“It is not about people, it’s about meeting members’ needs,” said Shevlin.

He also gives a formula for succeeding in financial services today. It comes near the end of the podcast. Listen up.

There’s a reference to Bill Bynum, CEO of Hope Credit Union. Hear his podcast here.

Listen to the Shevlin 2 podcast 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

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

Does your credit union have a future?

There’s the blunt question.

Welcome to the CU2.0 Podcast with your host Robert McGarvey. Today’s guest Jon Ogden, head of strategic content at digital firm MX which has recently released two provocative reports, The Ultimate Guide to the Future of Banking and the Ultimate Guide to Digital Transformation.

Read them, they are free.

But know they may keep you up at night.

That’s because many, many institutions – thousands of credit union among them – just don’t get it. They cling to an analog, physical world where consumers – most of them and more daily – crave better digital experiences.

The MX reports – filled with consumer research – prove this.  Today 86% of us say our primary contacts with our FI are mobile and online. Just 14% say it’s via branch or ATM.

59% of us say we would take a loan from a tech company.

49% of us predict “far fewer branches.”

This is a fast ride through lots of numbers but the bracing take away from the numbers is that now is the time to transform – or perish.

In this podcast Ogden talks about work MX has done for credit union giant BECU.  Hear our podcast with retired CEO Gary Oakland.

Know that some of the opinions in the reports come from banking futurist Chris Skinner.  Hear our podcast with Skinner.

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

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’s become a gripe fest.  People complain that they have to work at home, that the supermarket shelves are stripped of toilet paper, and – above all in the circles in which I move – we complain that business travel is basically on hold and just about every meeting and event has been cancelled.

That might seem fodder for lots of ranting from me in these columns. But, personally, I am struggling to stifle it.

Yes, I am impacted. Yes, trips have been canceled. Events have been canceled. Even a milestone college reunion of mine has been postponed.

Yes, the ineptitude inside the White House has made a fraught situation wretched – and it is hard to explain why there are nowhere near enough test kits, why the White House communications are packed with lies, and why six to eight weeks were lost due to incompetence at the top.

But here’s the deal: complaining would do no good.

And the cancellations and isolation that are our norms today are apparently doing some good.

The Skift headline frames the issue: No, It’s Not Fine to Keep Hosting Live Events. 

People have gotten sick with the coronavirus due to meeting attendance.  Proceeding with a meeting or event is foolhardy. That’s why so many have been canceled. 

Ditto business trips.

Sure, I get it, if the White House had not been inept we probably would have made much greater progress in taming this disease. But it wasn’t and so we use primitive but probably effective techniques such as social distancing and self quarantines and the impacts on life as we knew it have been profound.

But many have it a lot worse than we do.  I groan when I think of my canceled college reunion – I am Reunion Chair! – but then I think of the millions of college kids across the country who have in effect been evicted and told they are doing tele courses, like it or not.  Yes, I can see big lectures working fine as tele courses but many of my classes were small philosophy seminars with maybe a dozen students and lots of discussion and argument. How does that work now? And what about the social learning that makes college such a useful and perhaps distinctly American institution?

Then there are the impacts on the neediest. Andre House in Phoenix, which nightly feeds 500 or so homeless, has put its sitdown dinner on hold. Sacks of food will be distributed instead – but wouldn’t you much prefer a sit in a convivial atmosphere where volunteers treat you like you matter (and I have volunteered a number of times).  The homeless won’t starve. But they will be deprived those human moments that for many made dinner at Andre House special.

Now think of the many whose employment has been cancelled, or at least hours and income have been sharply reduced. Tens of thousands of restaurants are closed, or trying to make it on delivery only, and literally millions of employees and thousands of owners are scrambling to make it another week.

Think of the tens of thousands of flight attendants whose hours have been sharply reduced.

Or the hotel housekeeping staff who don’t have rooms to clean because there are no guests. Innumerable hotel workers face unpaid furloughs.

In China, it is difficult to see any recovery of the hotel business this year and maybe not next year.

Italy has major recovery struggles ahead.

Big questions loom. Will business travel ever return to its previous levels? Will events and meetings? Will flygskam rule?  Maybe our old habits will never resume.  

Etc. etc. and before we even get to the recovery phase we have to get out of the sickness and death phases and we have to be ready to mourn perhaps millions.

Easy it is to complain – and trust me I was annoyed when I saw shoppers last Saturday had stripped a central Phoenix Whole Foods bare of frozen pizza, dry pasta, and of course toilet paper, dish soap, and hand soaps.

But who to complain to?  

So many of us, in a panic mode, have slipped into a comfort zone where hoarding produces a kind of comfort and cursing out people who cancel our events seems normal.  It may not be rational but it is how we seem to think.

Do I want to look in a mirror and shout at myself?

No, that’s why I keep telling myself to stay cool.  It’s not easy. Not these days. But what better strategy do we have?