Author: Denise Wymore

Recent data from call reports and the NCUA’s CUSO Registry confirm that credit unions are increasingly utilizing the CUSO model to enhance their value proposition. NCUA Call report data shows that credit unions have invested just shy of $2 billion in CUSOs as of year-end 2015. Credit unions also reported $680 million in loans to CUSOs at the end of the year. Both figures are up significantly over the past 10 years, with investments more than tripling and loans more than doubling.

In addition to increasing dollars being put towards CUSOs, a higher percentage of credit unions are directing dollars to CUSOs. Nearly 35% of credit unions are either investing in or lending money to CUSOs – a number that has risen 10 percentage points over the past 10 years. Involvement in CUSOs is led by larger credit unions with 88% of credit unions over $1 billion in assets reporting CUSO activity.

Continue reading CUSOs Growing Impact by Jay Johnson

Each month we highlight at least one NACUSO member by interviewing one of their top executives. It’s an opportunity to tell their story in a casual and fun way. This month we sat down with John Dearing, Partner & Managing Director of Capstone Strategic, Inc.

PART ONE: Life Story and Experiences

What’s your current position and can you give me a brief overview of what it is you do in your work?

In short, we are growth engineers and I’m a Partner and Managing Director at Capstone.

Capstone helps our clients develop and execute strategic, external growth plans – investments and acquisitions, partnerships and alliances. It is my responsibility to make sure our clients are happy. I oversee delivery of client engagements. One of our measures of success is if clients come back for more. We make sure we have the right team to be able to work with clients over long periods of time. We consider it an accomplishment to have worked with some of our clients for decades. In fact, we are proud to continue working with our first client from 1995.

Continue reading NACUSO Member Spotlight on Capstone

I am faithful to my credit union…to a point.  I do all my “banking” at my credit union unless they give me a reason not to.   Interest rates are low everywhere but they have been particularly low at my credit union so I opened up an ING Direct Account years ago to hold the majority of my cash deposits.  ING Direct sold out to Capital One and now they are my other financial institution…yes Capital One, the grey behemoth of a bank.

I recently had a birthday and Capital One sent me a Jib Jab email with singing presidents (except for Ben):  Washington, Lincoln, Jackson and Franklin.  I know that no one at Capital One knows me and the message had no personal warmth behind it, but it still made me smile.  My image of Capital One became briefly a fuzzy cute behemoth.

Continue reading Birthday Greetings From Capital One

Thank you to all those who noticed and read my first blog on Collaboration.

Today lets talk about what makes collaboration work and what causes it to fail.

Collaboration and particularly the formation of CUSOs is all about the credit union answer to the challenge of creating scale and sharing risk in a cooperative structure. In the for-profit world scale is achieved through aggressive growth and acquisition. Neither work effectively in CU land. Aggressive growth requires access to capital, we don’t have access to any form of additional capital so growth is always a function of the current capital levels and ROA. Given that our members own us and returning value to them comes in the form of enhanced services, channels and rates our margins always should run at their minimum required levels, not their maximum levels. Thus it is difficult, without adversely affecting the members, to grow income at a level that would provide aggressively higher capital, which in turn would allow for aggressive growth and additional scale.

Continue reading Collaborating on Collaboration with Kirk Kordeleski

This month we sat down with 2 of the 2016 Next Big Idea Presenters Ian Lampl, Co-Founder and CEO of LoanStreet and Keith Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Rate Reset and the winner of this year’s Next Big Idea Competition. We recently found out that they have partnered to create a unique opportunity for credit unions.

PART ONE: Life Story and Experiences

What’s your current position and can you give me a brief overview of what it is you do in your work?

Keith: I am the Co-Founder and CEO and of Rate Reset, provider of Loan Reset, Acquisition and Retention software.  I am responsible for all day-to-day management decisions and for implementing the Company’s long and short term plans

Ian: My current position is Co-Founder & CEO of LoanStreet LLC.  The bulk of my day-to-day work revolves around educating credit unions on the economic benefits of loan participations and corresponding regulatory structure.  As you can imagine, this involves a lot of time on the phone!  But, I also present and teach at many conferences and events.  For example, we have run two webinars for the NCUA regarding loan participations. 

Continue reading NACUSO Spotlight on Next Big Idea Contestants