By Frank J. Diekmann
So, do you suppose this is going to become an annual thing?
During CUNA’s recent Governmental Affairs Conference (GAC) in Washington, members of Congress either introduced new legislation supported by credit unions or announced plans to do so. Talk about playing up to your audience.
It looks like other members of Congress are going to have to up their game, and the old standby applause-getters that “credit unions didn’t cause the financial crisis and shouldn’t have to pay the price” and “credit unions are about Main Street not Wall Street,” apparently just don’t cut it anymore in an Instagram/Twitter/Facebook world where everyone in the audience is now a member of the “media.”
The first bill to be announced was by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Richard Burr (R-NC), who introduced the Credit Union Fairness Act (S.3326), which would remove outdated duties for credit union boards and remove the requirement for credit unions to provide NCUA with the names of its loan officers from the Federal Credit Union Act.
Separately Sens. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) introduced the Credit Union Governance Modernization Act (S. 3323), a bipartisan bill that would allow a credit union board to expel a member for just cause.
Meanwhile, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) announced the Board Governance Modernization Act, which would modify the Federal Credit Union Act requirement that credit union boards meet once a month to not more than six times per year. It is co-sponsored by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV). The second bill announced would raise federal credit union loan maturity limits on non-mortgage loans from 15 to 20 years. It was introduced by Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV).
While it will be interesting to watch the 2021 GAC to see if credit unions see another round of the legislator love, what will be even more interesting is whether this new “thing” also extends to the annual conferences sponsored by bank trade associations in Washington.
The Capital of Irony
CUNA—which represents America’s democratically-run financial co-ops, held its GAC in Washington, which is at least supposed to be the beacon of democratic self-rule, transparency and openness— closed two of its sessions during the meeting to the press, including, wait for it, one on “inclusion.”
Really Serving Everyone?
Observed by Sue Mitchell during Mitchell, Stankovic’s recent Underground Collision RAW in Washington: “If our industry average credit score remains 670 then we aren’t necessarily serving all of our membership.”
Speaking of Inclusion…
If you have a moment, you might want to watch this video created by TV2 Denmark, which was shown by Mitchell during the Underground Collision.
Do You Believe In…Slow News, Common Bond?
Prior to the Internet and the ubiquitous mobile devices everyone now has in their pockets and purses, “news” could travel slowly. Chip Filson, who formerly headed up numerous functions at NCUA, recalled in 1980 when then Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker came to speak to CUNA’s GAC. Volcker announced the United States had just won the now famous “Miracle on Ice” Olympic hockey game.
“He talked about other things, but that’s all I remember,” Filson said.
Separately, during remarks before that same Underground Collision Raw event, Filson talked about the concept of “common bond,” which he said he believes “still has meaning.”
To illustrate his point, Filson pointed to the collapse of a company called Brandless, which specialized in trying to remove the brand “tax” that is part of all of all primary products.
“They offered value goods at a low, fixed price of $3. The packaging was plain,” said Filson. “The company failed after 2.5 years. It appealed to people just seeking the best value. The concept did not work because consumers didn’t know what to think about it. They didn’t know what brandless meant. They are comfortable choosing something in which they might pay a little bit more but they understand what the brand is about.”
On Marriage Fights, Good Jobs & Love
Here are some observations and points raised by author and researcher Marcus Buckingham during a keynote address to CUNA’s recent GAC that weren’t included in our earlier coverage focused on the “nine lies about work” that cause credit unions and other employers big headaches when it comes to hiring and retaining people.
Buckingham challenged CU leaders to rethink just about their every assumption. So, in absolutely no particular order:
- “Most marriage counseling is based on the idea that a good marriage is just the opposite of a bad marriage, so just don’t do that. Every unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way, but they have one thing in common. In all unhappy marriages, people argue a lot. I know, I was shocked, too. To follow the logic, then people in good marriages and happy relationships shouldn’t fight. But researchers have found if you count the fights in an unhappy marriage and a happy marriage they are the same. It turns out it’s not the number of fights, it’s what goes on between the fights. People become psychologically separated from each other.”
- “Do strengths replays. Stop and ask what were you doing there. What worked there? So often, we think ‘good job’ is the end of a sentence. No, ‘good job’ is the beginning of an enquiry. Ask, ‘What were you thinking?’ Help people get super-curious about what works when they work. The best coaches pay attention to what works and then interrogate it. If you do that, the best talent in your communities will come running to you.”
- “We need to take love more seriously. We have systematically engineered love out of work. Love and time have a strange relationship. Love is the most generative human condition. There is unquestionably things you can do to put more love in the work you do. If you spent 20% of your time at your job doing things you love, the likelihood of burnout is significantly reduced. To build love into your work, take a blank pad with you for a week and draw a line down the middle. On one side, Loved It, on the other, Loathed It. Record each activity in one column or the other. You have some things you are really good at that you hate. You wonder why we have 80% of people hating their time at work. Why do it? Not to be self-indulgent, you’ve got to make a contribution, and love is a precursor to contribution.
A Few Notes from the Wegners
CUToday.info had extensive coverage of the most recent Herb Wegner Memorial Award winners for 2020, which you can find here.
But here are a few comments that didn’t make our coverage:
From John Fiore, retired CEO of Andigo Credit Union: “I was chairman of the National Credit Union Foundation in 2001. I bet some of you are thinking, ‘Could he possibly be wearing the same tux he was wearing 20 years ago?’ Let’s get that behind us—the answer is yes.”
From Maurice Smith, CEO of Local Government FCU: “I have been coming to these Wegner events for a number of years and I have witnessed some amazing stories. I have listened to inspirational tales of hardship and victory and overcoming challenges and helping communities and conviction to the credit union way and I have left inspired. I have also left feeling like I am such a slacker. I need to get on with my life and do something.”
Later, Smith saluted his wife of 40 years, noting that when he met her, “I didn’t have a track record that indicated that any of this would happen.”
Smith noted that earlier in the day he had wrapped up his term on CUNA’s board. “It was a bloodless coup; it’s called a term limit.”
A Talking Head
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who is a wee bit shorter than Abraham Lincoln, nearly disappeared behind the podium at CUNA’s GAC. “Podiums this size have never been my friend. I am for most of you literally a talking head,” he said, drawing laughs from the crowd.
Increasing Expectations
Political consultant David Plouffe spoke to GAC, but he also previously held a leadership job at Uber. In a sign of the kind of challenge Uber has created for itself (and even other providers, including CUs), he noted, “Speed has become a prison. If someone got a ride in seven minutes and then five, and then it was eight, they cancelled.”
Maybe it Was Card Points?
Billionaire Tom Steyer has dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president. One right-leaning blog recently said of Steyer that he had “made his fortune in credit unions.” Actually, Steyer founded a hedge fund and later, after growing wealthy, he helped charter a community bank, Beneficial State Bank in Oakland, a nonprofit chartered in 2007 to provide loans to the underserved in California and along the West Coast.
An Old Forecast
Following my recent column on how CUNA’s GAC is much like climate change, one reader sent me a note recalling one of his first GACs when then Sen. Jake Garn, who was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told a credit union audience expansion of “field of membership would eventually be what killed the goose that laid the golden egg of credit unions.”
One could make a pretty good argument that regulators not signed off on expanded field of membership rules and had Congress not passed the Credit Union Membership Access Act in 1998 thousands of small credit unions tied to single employers or narrow fields of membership would have not been able to merge and instead would have failed, at a cost to all credit unions.
In this case, the senator’s observation is likely more big picture about what happens when any organization forgets its roots and reason for being, and is well worth remembering.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info.