The CU2.0 Podcast

Epizode

• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 408 Raisin's Alastair Wood Brings High Yield Savings Accounts to Credit Unions 10.06.2026 39min

  Send us Fan Mail How does a lawyer - by education and employment history - become a top executive at fintechs? Good question. But here’s another one: how can a fintech help credit unions win members for savings accounts paying in the vicinity of 4% APR? On the show is Alastair Wood, CEO of Raisin, a fintech that helps credit unions market innovative products - high yield savings included - to attract new members. Understand, Raisin does essentially all the lifting involved ...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode Joshua Evans on AI and Credit Unions: Are You Losing Your Human Touch? 03.06.2026 41min

  Send us Fan Mail Can a credit union be a credit union without human employees? Are credit unions, in the age of AI, at risk of losing the humanity that distinguishes them? In this provocative episode, keynote speaker Joshua Evans, who bills himself as an expert on the workplace of the future, talks about how AI is transforming credit unions, how parts of this are to the good, but, he insists, credit unions need to maintain their humanity. That’s a lot to think about but it’s thinking th...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 406 Summit CU's James Grenon on Careful vs Courage 27.05.2026 33min

  Send us Fan Mail Careful or courageous? Which are you? James Grenon, vice president of administration at Summit Credit Union, a mid-sized institution in North Carolina, raised exactly that question in a recent CUInight story entitled: “Careful or courageous: The leadership choice that shapes culture.” Regular listeners know I have a bugaboo about what I see as the unhealthy risk aversion of many CU executives and boards so you can guess I am all in on Grenon’s topic. Grenon sets the s...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 407 Hanscom FCU CEO Peter Rice on His New Book About Walking the Camino and Leadership 27.05.2026 1h 6min

  Send us Fan Mail Come join Peter Rice, CEO of $2.3 billion Hanscom Federal Credit Union, on a walk. A Long walk. 70+ miles. On the Camino de Santiago in Spain and Portugal. Rice did that walk three times for his book Break or Become: How Hard Roads Make Good Leaders. What’s the book about? In an hour long podcast Rice explains and, listen up, it’s about the death of a spouse, raising two young boys as a single dad, entering a second marriage, and lastly a Camino with two...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 405 Cary Strange on PayOnward's Plan to Revolutionize Payments 20.05.2026 42min

  Send us Fan Mail Can bill pay be revived at credit unions? You may remember, perhaps a generation ago, when bill pay was revered by financial institutions because it was viewed as creating stickier members who, having inputted a dozen or two bill pay recipients, were reluctant to change FIs because of the work involved. Bill pay lost a lot of its stick when various fintechs rolled out widgets that collected billpay data so it could be transferred to another institution. The death blow c...
• CU 2.0 Podcast John Crews Nominated to Head the NCUA Board: The Story Inside the Beltway 14.05.2026 45min

  Send us Fan Mail The NCUA looks to be getting a new board chair: John Crews, a longtime Washington DC hand and currently Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Treasury Department. Prior jobs include Policy Director of the Senate Banking Committee and Policy Advisor to House majority leader Steve Scalise. He’s a guy who knows his way around inside the Beltway. There’s an urgency to his nomination because present NCUA board chair Kyle Hauptman has been named to the board of the ...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 404 Mark Brantley the CUEvangelist Spreading the Good Word 13.05.2026 30min

  Send us Fan Mail How could I not talk with the CUEvangelist who sees his calling as “Spreading the Good News About CUs!” My interest in the CUEvangelist was triggered by a provocative piece titled “Black history is credit union history” that was posted at CUInsight and then I saw the author, Mark Brantley, dubbed himself the CUEvangelist. Brantley has the chops to warrant that moniker. He’s Asst. Director of Operations at Arizona State University but - notably - he is th...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 403 ELGA Credit Union and Vertice AI Explain How to Make Smarter, Targeted Loan Offers 06.05.2026 33min

  Send us Fan Mail Wouldn’t you like to make more - and more profitable - auto loans? Just about every credit union would say a loud yes and that is why this episode is a must listen. On the show is Zach Eychaner, the VP of Digital Experience at ELGA Credit Union, a $1.5 billion institution based in Michigan. Also on the show is Mitch Rutledge, CEO of Vertice AI, a Georgia based company that says it provides actionable and measurable account holder intelligence to help credit unions...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 402 Amanda Wick on Stablecoin and the New World Financial Order 29.04.2026 47min

  Send us Fan Mail Amanda Wick is a name to know when talking about things crypto. A onetime US government prosecutor, Wick specialized in crypto currencies and money laundering. Later she went on to found the Association for Women In Cryptocurrency and now she is a principal in Incite where she provides expert advice on crypto related matters. Wick’s current focus: stablecoin. In the show Wick talks about the risks posed by stablecoins to credit unions and also th...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 401 One Washington Financial and ALM Company Delfi 22.04.2026 43min

  Send us Fan Mail Asset liability management - ALM as it’s known - can be fun, good for a credit union’s balance sheet and, dare we say it, sexy. On the show is Daniel Ahn, CEO of Delfi, a company that - and I quote from the website - “combines deep public and private sector experience with cutting-edge AI expertise—bringing best-in-class technology to banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions.” The website adds: “Transform your bank or credit union financial decision making a...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 400 Is Remynt the New, Kinder - and Effective! - Debt Collection Tool 15.04.2026 51min

  Send us Fan Mail Do you want to talk about bad debts and collections and…what’s that, you’d rather discuss athlete’s foot and gyms? Listen up: on the show today is Gwyneth Borden, founder and CEO of Remynt, a debt collection CUSO - funded by One Washington Financial, the investment arm of Washington State Employees Credit Union and a recent guest on the show along with Starlight, an innovative fintech that also won funding from One Washington Financial. So, yes, Remynt is doing coll...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 399 First Source CU and Appli On Calculators That Are Magic and Boost Loan Originations 08.04.2026 33min

  Send us Fan Mail It’s time to talk about something really, truly exciting in credit union land. How about online/mobile calculators? Calculators! Yes, I hear those derive laughs but listen up: on this show you will hear from Tim Pranger at Appli, who has developed calculators that users genuinely like and use. Katie Ullman, vice president of marketing and community at First Source Credit Union in Utica NY, is also on. That’s an institution with around $1 billion in assets. A...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode Episode 398 Jack Henry's Lee Wetherington on Gen Z, AI and More 01.04.2026 54min

  Send us Fan Mail What do you know about Gen Z? That just may be the critical question confronting credit unions today and that’s because, age 13 to 29, Gen Z is increasingly the focus of fintechs, neo banks and non banks who all want to grab these consumers. How can credit unions win in this battle? On the show is Lee Wetherington, senior director of corporate strategy at Jack Henry, and lately he has been thinking in depth about Gen Z because this generation has entered a prime spendin...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 397 Union Credit's Dave Buerger on Consumer Confidence - and How to Strengthen It 25.03.2026 41min

  Send us Fan Mail The CUInsight headline caught my eye: “Why credit unions must step up as financial stabilizers to rebuild consumer confidence.” The piece was authored by Dave Buerger, CEO of Union Credit and, before that, he was CEO of CuneXus, where he was a co-founder. At Union Credit the mission is delivering 1-click, perpetual loans to credit union members. 70+ credit unions are Union Credit customers and a key to Union Credit’s business is that it memberizes non members...
• CU 2.0 Podcast InTouch Credit Union Adopts Eltropy's Agentic AI - CEO Kent Lugrand Tells Why 23.03.2026 44min

  Send us Fan Mail Agentic AI. Google’s Gemini explains what this means: “Agentic AI represents a shift from AI that simply 'talks' to AI that 'does.' While previous iterations of AI were primarily reactive—answering questions or generating text when prompted—Agentic AI systems are proactive. They can reason, plan, and execute multi-step tasks autonomously to achieve a specific goal." Agentic AI is the hot topic in AI today and credit unions can have it. Now. On the show are Abhishek Tiwari...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 396 First Entertainment CU CEO Stephen Owen on the Birth of CineFi 18.03.2026 30min

  Send us Fan Mail And First Entertainment Credit Union Begat CineFi. Say what? First Entertainment is the big show business credit union. Based in Hollywood, it has assets of around $2.1 billion and serves around 90,000 members, many of them who work in Hollywood, doing everything from acting to the skilled crafts (such as set building) that create Hollywood’s magic. On the show is Stephen Owen, CEO of First Entertainment and he is here to tell what CineFi is, why First Entertainme...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 395 Curql and Stablecore On Why Now Is the Time for CUs to Embrace Digital Assets 11.03.2026 31min

  Send us Fan Mail In mid February, Curql, the collective of 160+ credit unions, announced its first blockchain investment into Stablecore, a company that provides digital asset infrastructure for credit unions. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars now are flowing into stablecoin, a digital currency backed by fiat currency and accordingly it has little volatility. Big banks are pouncing on stablecoins but the credit union problem is a lack of tools for managing digital currencies. Ente...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 394 CORA Loyalty's Beth McCoy on What Loyalty Means in 2026 04.03.2026 41min

  Send us Fan Mail Are you still relying on product based rewards for members? Meet the new tool on the block: relationship building. A trigger is that interchange rates are under attack and, for many financial institutions, it’s been interchange that funded the rewards programs. So what’s the new approach? On the show is Beth McCoy, CEO of CORA Loyalty, who provides a roadmap for building member relationships that benefit both the member and the institution. CORA Loyalty explain...
• CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 393 DeepTarget's Preetha Pulusani on Puttinhg CU Member Data to Work 26.02.2026 44min

  Send us Fan Mail Fact: credit unions have lots of data about their members. Everything from home address to their liquidity. Fact: credit unions, most of them, are woefully inept at mining this data to better serve those members and also to boost member retention and up cashflow into the credit union. Enter DeepTarget, a Huntsville AL based fintech that serves 285 clients, 85% of which are credit unions and they range in size from around $25 million in assets to several billion dol...
• CU2.0 Podcast Prizeout's David Metz and United Financial's Sarah Vasey on Credit Card Rewards That Work 25.02.2026 25min

  Send us Fan Mail Just when I thought credit card rewards initiatives were on the chopping block, here comes David Metz and Priizeout with an innovative twist on credit card rewards and it’s one that already is winning credit union applause. Proof is that also on the show is Sarah Vasey, Chief Operating Officer at Michigan-based United Financial Credit Union, an institution with around $350 million in assets. Sarah herself is a credit card rewards beneficiary and she tells what s...