By Frank J. Diekmann
Enjoy bullet points? Then you’ll enjoy the following, courtesy of various observations heard during recent travels.
- A new report is forecasting that electric cars will make transportation so inexpensive that by 2030 95% of the passenger miles traveled in the U.S. could take place in on-demand, autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets rather than in individually owned cars. If true, the transformation will have significant implications for credit union lending. 2030 may seem like a long way off, but it’s just a dozen years away. And Hurricane Katrina was just a dozen years ago.
- Forget “It.” The scary clown in Credit Union Land remains fintechs. But before you go and hide in the closet where the bad guy/murderer/zombie never looks, here’s some marketplace Valium courtesy of Neil Mumm, VP-corporate Strategy, with Visa: “If you look at the graveyard of fintech players, it’s overflowing. It’s important to monitor, but also important not to get too freaked out over this.”
- Here’s some advice shared by a CEO at a recent meeting: “Let me save you $4 million in branch location consulting fees: Locate your branch in front of a shopping mall.”
- How many times have you been frustrated when you’ve been deep under water–not financially, but literally deep under water–because you were unable to make a payment? Too many to count, right? Well, good news. Token, a startup hardware company, has just introduced its first product: The Token ring, an identity ring designed to store payment credentials and secure privacy with a fingerprint sensor. That’s nice, but the really good news is that the company also reassures the new ring is waterproof up to 50 meters.
- If any credit union should have been able to come up with new capital, you would think it would be this one… The $771,000 Philadelphia Mint FCU has become the latest to merge, joining the $2-billion TruMark Financial.
- On the way to the recent WOCCU meeting in Vienna, Austria, stopped at a funky hotel in Graz, Austria that described rooms this way: “For big new ideas, enthusiastic dance moves or movie evenings in a relaxing atmosphere….”
- The financial services Tweet of the Year so far goes to @DavidSchwal for this observation: “Welcome to 2017, where people associate bitcoin with safety and Wells Fargo with theft.”
- Which state has the most CUSOs? According to Guy Messick, legal counsel to NACUSO, it’s California. “But I think Texas is going to catch up,” said Messick at the recent NASCUS meeting.
- Also shared by John Lass of Lass Advisory Services during the NASCUS meeting in San Diego was the personal mission of legendary entrepreneur Elon Musk: “To die on Mars, but not on impact.”
- During his remarks, Lass also offered this thought on digital currency: “I believe blockchain is here to stay. Tokenization has largely been implemented as a part of Apple Pay. Between those two they are fundamental game-changers. Having said that, given how they work, the change has to happen on a systemic basis and it’s not easy for an individual player or set of players to get out there. It all has to be standardized protocol based. As for virtual currencies, that is hard to predict. Bitcoin has exploded, but do I think it will crash? Yes, I think it will crash.”
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info or @FrankCUToday.