By Frank J. Diekmann
Get ready for some Mile High silos, Mile High irony, and Mile High missed opportunities for re-sparking passion this week.
The people-helping-people people will, unfortunately, not be the people-meeting-people-from-other-countries-people when the World Council of Credit Unions convenes its World Credit Union Conference in Denver beginning Sunday night.
The WOCCU meeting will bring together a wide assortment of folks from credit union movements around the world and is being held in conjunction with CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference. And therein lies the sad irony: even though they will be surrounded by fellow credit unionists from continents far away, for many U.S. attendees America’s Credit Union Conference will be a Conference for Americans. They’ll never know what they missed.
The Americans will mostly talk to other Americans, sit with other Americans, and interact from other Americans (at the very least, I hope), although they may meet a few foreigners when they mistake Canadians for Americans.
And In The Narrowest of Silos...
Worse, the silos will be even narrower and more parochial for one group of attendees: volunteer board members at U.S. credit unions. I’m sorry to say I’ve witnessed at many-an-international meeting tour buses full of U.S. CU board members who not only don’t meet people from foreign credit unions, they don’t even meet people from other U.S. credit unions.
Like a conjoined, five-, eight- or even 12-headed body, they move in unison from one session to the next, go to dinner together and march in lock-step back to the hotel like a chain gang, almost oblivious to all the great global resources around them. They’re spending a lot of the members’ money; it demands ROI—so Reach Out & Invite.
What do these non-U.S. CUs have to offer? Plenty. The American CUs can be arrogant and patronizing, assuming that just because the U.S. is the largest and wealthiest of the world’s credit union movements, there is nothing to be learned from the work taking place in other nations and that other nations are here to learn from us. There’s plenty to be learned by U.S. CUs. The Australians and Canadians operate many progressive CUs, and do so while being taxed and operating in countries where big banks really dominate. Kenyans have led the way in innovative mobile services. Brazilians and Poles have developed models using common backoffice infrastructures and branding.
The Worst Mistake of All
But the worst mistake of all this week has nothing to do with product and service strategies in other countries. The greatest value of any World Council event is being exposed to people who have a spirited fervor for credit unions. Think Europe and South America and the World Cup if you want some idea of the passion. These credit unions don’t see CU philosophy as some sort of history museum exhibit; they live it every day. They hail from places that are using credit unions to empower those who have long been powerless. They are passionate and excited and eager to change their worlds.
Many Americans—who sadly often attend conferences based on location rather than vocation—could benefit greatly from spending some time with these not-for-profit prophets and allowing a little of it to rub off on them.
It’s a big planet—but you’ll only learn that when you get outside your silo.
This Political Thriller Stars Credit Unions
It sounds like a page torn from the script of House of Cards or a political thriller. If the allegations being leveled in the lawsuit filed by Alabama One Credit Union against some powerful political players in the state prove to be true, it will have repercussions all the way to the governor’s office.
If you haven’t been following the story (CUToday.info has the full story here), the credit union is alleging that in the years after it became involved in a high-profile case here that involved a local businessman who multi-million-dollar developments went south—leading to bankruptcy, a conviction and a prison term–people close to the governor pressured a former state CU regulator to temporarily oust the CU’s CEO, and when that ultimately didn’t work, installed a new state regulator who issued a cease-and-desist letter to the CU that included replacing senior management as part of the agreement.
The credit union is alleging in the case that the powerful group of defendants’ goal was to get management in place that would agree to settle lawsuits related to that businessman’s fraud that also involved them—essentially helping make good on their losses.
It hasn’t been pretty. But if Alabama One and its CEO, John Dee Carruth, prove their allegations in court, then more power to them for not capitulating to these powerful players. Carruth has also recently filed a lawsuit against a member that alleges libel. You can find that story here.
The Real Last Laugh In Data Theft
I could buy your credit card data today. Or tomorrow. Or any day I choose. And not just you, many of your members.
CUToday.info has reported on all of the major retailer data and card breaches, but often the impression is that thieves are sophisticated, computer literate wizards ingeniously hacking vulnerable backdoors in retailers’ systems. And many are.
But there is a whole other sub-level of cyber-thieves who are a lot less ingenious but every bit as complicit and evil. These are the folks who buy all those compromised card numbers and data. It’s a lot easier than you think, as Joel Pearson, Sales Director with CSID, made clear in remarks at the League of Southeastern CUs’ recent annual meeting.
I’ve heard other experts like Pearson offer similarly sobering assessments, and after hearing them it’s hard to believe anyone ever uses a plastic card again.
'Reverse-Engineering' Your Life
Pearson noted just about anyone can go online and by a compromised credit card for anywhere from $3 to $20 each. The price rises to $25 if an email and password are available. It’s those files, he said, that can really “unspool your life.” Pearson, who said his company has harvested more than 350-million names/card data, etc. online in the “dark web,” outlined a scenario that should give anyone the e-jeebies.
“With just your e-mail, I can Google it and get your LinkedIn profile,” said Pearson. “And now I can start reverse-engineering your life. I get your address. Your birthday. Your schools. And I can send you a personal looking email with a link that includes malware. Soon I can log your every computer stroke; tax info, medical info, etc. I can go to USPS.com and do a mail address change and now I get all your information. I can get credit cards or payday loans. You won’t know until it’s in collections six months later.”
Pearson said getting personal information on children, such as Social Security numbers, can be a very long-lived and lucrative scam. “I’ve got 18 years to run debt in their name,” he said.
Another worrisome observation: Pearson said that “at every credit union we have talked to they had employee credentials exposed. How many use the same email and password for everything?”
Hold on, you say. We’re covered. We installed malware detection software.
Pearson’s response: “Even the best malware detection can only detect 5% of the malware that’s out there.”
“Once information is out, it’s out,” Pearson continued. “You can’t stop ID theft. It’s unpreventable. It’s the early detection and having someone who can do the work to get it restored where the value lies.” Pearson’s company provides those services; he noted that for the average victim of ID theft, it can take a year or more to get everything straightened out—if ever.
The clear takeaway from all this: the ones getting the last laugh are the Amish.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator-in-Chief at CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info.