Organizers Announce New National Credit Union Cannabiz Conference

A national Credit Union Cannabiz Conference, that will exclusively focus on how credit unions can provide banking services for marijuana-related businesses, will be held in Chicago in April, organizers announced Wednesday.

“There is tremendous opportunity, and tremendous risk, involved in banking cannabis funds,” CUCC Executive Director Amy Vigil said. “We realize that this is a new frontier that requires in-depth knowledge of cannabis-related businesses, of compliance and federal regulation. We aim to demystify how credit unions can serve this growing business.”

Vigil is vice president of association services for the Credit Union Association of New Mexico. Paul Stull, president/CEO of CUANM, also is involved with organizing the new conference.

Conference attendees will learn strategies for success and drawbacks of failed planning from leading business and industry experts.

In addition to best practice strategies, CUCC organizers say credit unions will learn what cannabis businesses want, what regulators look for in a model compliance program, when your credit union is ready to open business accounts and whether your core system supports your plan, making the board aware of the risks and reasons for serving MRBs, how to communicate with employees, members, regulators and the community and how to manage reputational risk.

The conference’s keynote speaker will be Gov. Gary Johnson, who served as New Mexico’s governor and was the first governor to advocate for marijuana legalization while in office from 1995 to 2003. In 2014, he became president/CEO of the Cannabis Sativa Inc., an OTC publicly traded company, which sells a variety of marijuana products. Two years later, he entered the presidential race.

There is more information about the conference at CUCannabiz.org.