ORLANDO, Fla.—If there was one revealing moment during Wednesday morning’s Credit Union Executive Panel at VeleraLIVE, it may have been what happened when moderator Mark Sievewright asked for a show of hands from the audience on two hot-button issues: how many credit union leaders had a clear AI strategy, and later, how many had a stablecoin strategy. In both cases, very few hands went up.
That hesitation framed much of the wide-ranging discussion during Day 2 of VeleraLIVE at the Orlando Marriott World Center, where Sievewright, founder of Sievewright & Associates, moderated a panel featuring Mirella Reznic, president/CEO of Farmers Insurance FCU; Caroline Willard, president/CEO of Cornerstone League; Ken Senus, president/CEO of St. Mary’s Bank; and Mike Valentine, president/CEO of BCU.
Across topics that included AI, stablecoins, growth, succession planning, regulation and interchange, panelists repeatedly returned to the same theme: credit unions cannot afford to be passive as the operating environment grows more complex.
On growth and scale, Reznic said the issue is “paramount” for Farmers Insurance FCU, which serves a nationwide SEG and now operates in multiple states. She said the credit union has more demand for high-quality loans than its balance sheet can support, making scale essential not just to compete with community banks, but with institutions such as JPMorgan Chase. Reznic said credit unions in similar situations should not think in terms of choosing between organic or inorganic growth, arguing both are necessary as technology costs rise and concentration risks remain high.
Senus and Valentine echoed that point, with Senus saying scale is increasingly tied to the cost of meeting member expectations around digital access and fintech integration. Valentine said BCU has seen firsthand how mergers can unlock growth for SEG-based institutions that lack the resources to serve widely dispersed memberships on their own, but cautioned against “scale for scale’s sake,” arguing growth must be purposeful and tied to strategy.
The conversation then turned sharply to AI, where the gap between interest and readiness was clear. Senus said St. Mary’s Bank is already using AI and automation to handle repetitive work and free employees for higher-value thinking, while Reznic offered one of the panel’s most detailed comments, describing how Farmers Insurance FCU is applying AI in commercial lending document analysis, vendor sentiment analysis and call center coaching. She said the technology is helping the credit union contain costs as it scales, adding that institutions should think less about “throwing bodies at it” and more about using AI to improve productivity.
CU Must Get Involved
Valentine said BCU’s board has formed a dedicated technology committee with a strong AI focus, and argued this is one area where credit unions need to get involved early rather than wait on the sidelines. He acknowledged there is understandable employee anxiety around job displacement, but said he views AI as more likely to elevate staff into more meaningful roles than eliminate them. That same tension surfaced when Sievewright asked the audience who had a clear AI strategy—and only a handful appeared to respond.
Willard, meanwhile, emphasized that smaller credit unions will need help navigating AI, and said leagues can play a major role in democratizing access to tools and expertise. She pointed to work Cornerstone is doing with call report data and analytics to help credit unions better demonstrate performance in underserved communities, saying that kind of quantitative evidence can be especially powerful when responding to lawmakers and regulators.
Succession planning emerged as another major theme, with Valentine warning that too many credit unions still treat it as an afterthought. He said one of the biggest strategic failures boards make is not planning early enough for leadership transitions, noting some institutions end up pursuing mergers simply because they do not have a CEO pipeline. Willard agreed, saying leagues regularly see smaller institutions underestimate both the cost and complexity of replacing senior leaders, and stressed that succession planning needs to extend several layers down into the organization—not just the CEO seat.
On regulation and payments, Willard delivered one of the panel’s sharpest warnings, focusing on the spread of interchange-related legislative threats at both the state and federal levels. She said 22 interchange bills surfaced across the country last year, including in four of the five states she oversees, and argued lawmakers often do not understand the complexity of card economics, fraud risk or the role interchange plays in offsetting issuer costs. Valentine called Illinois’ interchange fee law “bad law,” warning the biggest threat for credit unions is not just lost interchange revenue but potentially crippling compliance penalties if similar measures spread.
Reznic closed on a more forward-looking note, arguing that while AI dominates today’s conversation, credit unions should already be thinking about what comes next. She said the real long-term opportunity is not any one technology, but whether credit unions can better connect with younger generations by leaning harder into the cooperative model’s natural alignment with values such as community, purpose and authenticity.