By Frank J. Diekmann
Are we walking right into Housing Crash 2.0? Are you about to be sued because your website violates the Americans with Disabilities Act? What is your pilot really announcing?
Answers to those questions and more, below:
- Dwight Johnston, the chief economist with the California and Nevada leagues who earned some recognition for calling the housing crash in the years leading up to the Great Recession (and who even put his money where his mouth was and sold his own home), said he is not seeing warning signs in the current market. “It’s not a bubble, but some bubble-like behavior is getting worrisome,” he said.
- Dennis Dollar, the former NCUA chairman, offered these thoughts at the NASCUS meeting: “The member is a much better regulator than you or NCUA. They will vote with their feet.” Later he added, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Sorry to all the PETA people in the room.”
- Dollar, whose Birmingham, Ala.-based firm now does a lot of work related to mergers, also observed, “If you don’t allow mergers to take place when the fiduciaries of the credit union have voted in favor, then you will be in a position to be merging that CU when it has 3% capital.”
- Kristopher Kovacs, who is leading Constellation Digital Partners, which is in the midst of the biggest capital raise in CU history with $22 million to date, told the NASCUS meeting that at every credit union conference he goes to he sees presenters with slides all about how fintechs are coming to take their business. “But that’s not what the big banks think,” he said. “Banks see it as a partnering opportunity and credit unions see it as a threat.”
- Later in his remarks, Kovacs said “We aren’t failing because we don’t have great ideas. We are failing because we are locked up (in vendor contracts). For too many credit unions, an RFP is a digital strategy.”
- Have you budgeted to reconfigure your website to comply with standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act? What? you ask.
How could there be an ADA issue with a website? As CUToday.info reported, a number of credit unions have been on the defendant end of such lawsuits, according to Francois Henriquez, a partner in the Miami law firm Schutts Bowen, and the former counsel for U.S. Central Credit Union. Henriquez pointed credit unions to a case now in the courts, Gil v. Winn Dixie Stores. At the heart of the case is when is a website a public accommodation for purposes of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiff has filed more than 70 lawsuits alleging various companies’ websites are not in compliance with the ADA. What makes this case unique is that it is the first to go to court; all the other cases have been settled, he said. Earlier, in a separate case, Target lost a similar lawsuit, noted Henriquez, with the court finding its site was a public accommodation. Henriquez explained the ADA covers “intangible barriers,” and at issue is whether it can be a “gateway” because it is “heavily integrated with the company’s physical locations.” “We represent a website developer and hosting company and they host a lot of websites for credit unions,” said Henriquez. “We see credit unions getting hit with these types of lawsuits. I think there are going to be a lot more of these before there are a lot less of them.”
- Modern passenger aircraft are some of the most sophisticated machines ever devised by mankind. They can fly halfway around the world at 500 miles per hour without refueling, with some offering hotel-like amenities and nearly all having in-seat entertainment centers. So, what’s up with the Wright Bros.-era pilot-to-passenger communication system, which, if I’m not mistaken, uses a string and a tin can strung above each passenger seat?Having just completed a dozen flights in the last month, it’s hard to overstate the number of times I heard what I suspect was a pilot sharing some critical, maybe life-saving information—or maybe he was just scratching his beard with the microphone–because I couldn’t make out a word he/she was saying.
- NAFCU held its annual Congressional Caucus recently, and as it always does it attracted leading members of Congress. But if you could sum up all of those remarks, it might best be described as “They came, they saw, they talked reg burden…And we’ll see you next year, thanks.”
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info or @FrankCUToday.