What We’ve Seen and What We’re Watching
CU Times looks ahead to some big news items that are on its editorial staff's collective horizons.
You all doing OK? I ask because the year so far has been a daily coinflip of hoping things will land on the good news side. I’m not afraid of bad news. I’m simply saying, wouldn’t it be nice to have some calm for just a little bit?
Let’s take a calming breath together and pause for this reflection moment: Remember when everyone was buying duct tape and tarps to prepare for Y2K? And then nothing happened? Good, paranoid times. Thank you for joining me in that reflection of a simpler time.
Let’s get back to today’s world.
So far this year we’ve had almost too many huge stories happening in our world – from the insurrection on Jan. 6, to Jim Nussle quitting the Republican Party, to a new President, to Todd Harper taking over at the NCUA, to rising economic concerns about mortgage delinquencies. Oh, and there’s still a pandemic going on. We’re not even done with February. Let’s look ahead to some big news items that are on our collective horizons.
CUNA’s GAC
The no in-person experiment of virtual conferences and webinars, and so many video meetings that we’ve all experienced this past year, will face a real test during CUNA’s upcoming Governmental Affairs Conference.
Last year around this time was the last time many of us were on an airplane, much less took a vacation – unless you’re an anti-masker and/or don’t believe the pandemic is real and/or don’t care there is a pandemic. Whatever the case may be, a year after the largest in-person credit union event, we are going to experience the first-ever virtual version of GAC.
We don’t know a lot about exactly how GAC is going to work in a virtual environment and how you can effectively, virtually hike the hill. The lineup for GAC, which technically runs March 2-4 (unless you count the pre-conference sessions from Feb. 23-25), appears to be similar to what we’d experience if 6,000 of us were in Washington, D.C. We’ll hear from bigwigs such as Lt. General H.R. McMaster, news anchor Soledad O’Brien, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I suppose watching them on your computer will feel like you’re watching Meet the Press.
I’m most interested in how well the topic-specific breakout sessions will work and again, the whole meaning of GAC, hiking the hill and how effective that will be with lawmakers who, from our experience, continue to have a tough time navigating virtual technology (see Lawyer Cat).
I do wish CUNA lots of luck with this event, because it could set the bar either very high or very low based on how it all is executed for CUNA members.
The NCUA
I’ll keep this short. This month marks the first NCUA board meeting with Todd Harper at the wheel. As I mentioned in my previous column, they have a lot to work through. Harper, Hood, Hauptman – good luck working together. Everyone in this industry is watching if and how the three of you can get along and accomplish some very important things for all credit unions.
Mergers and Acquisitions
After that brief pause in merger and acquisition activity in the early months of the pandemic, things are getting very busy very quickly. New York, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania and other states have seen announcements of new credit union mergers, acquisitions, and credit unions gobbling up small banks and savings and loan branches. Why now? And why so many? There appear to be a couple of issues coming together: Banks looking to trim some fat and a commercial real estate crisis. As for the banks wanting to lose some weight (New Year’s resolution?), it seems as if many smaller and a few larger banks were eyeing offloading many of these branches in the months before the pandemic and deals with credit unions were being made. Those deals were put on hold until the final months of 2020 as property taxes were coming due. This put many small banks in a tough spot as bigger credit unions were ready to get back to making a better deal for the credit union. Commercial real estate experts have been saying, “there’s a lot of distress, and it’s coming” when referring to the state of the marketplace. If it’s something credit unions can take advantage of to the benefit of their communities and expanding their employment base, I say good for those credit unions.
CUs and COVID
Community involvement is thankfully a core belief for credit unions. Partnering your credit union with local medical offices to distribute COVID-19 vaccines or even becoming a coronavirus testing site couldn’t be more on the mark for what credit unions could be doing to help end this health and economic crisis. American Heritage Credit Union is the one credit union we know of, so far, that is doing that. Well, they are hosting coronavirus screenings free to the public as part of a partnership with a community organization in the Philadelphia area. As we have seen with credit union executives opening up their branches/community spaces to give kids a better virtual classroom space to work in with reliable internet service, this coronavirus testing and/or vaccine distribution idea is truly a great thing to do. If you have the space in those empty branches of yours, why not do this? We need more testing for the public and more places to distribute the coronavirus vaccine as production ramps up. I hope credit unions see this opportunity as they do each holiday season when they collect food and donations for those who need it. It’s really the same idea.
Final Thought
It’s our job to keep an eye on these topics and several other issues happening in the credit union space. As an editorial group, I’d say that we are mostly concerned with what the economy will do this year and just how severe the mortgage delinquencies will strain the system. As we look at the economic data coming in months ahead, we’ll be watching the items mentioned above and report back to you what we find.
Speaking of watching things, I almost forgot to mention one other thing we’ve gone through this year – the Nexflix series Bridgerton. Can we all admit that the show is really Desperate Housewives, but with a British accent?
We’ve seen and gone through a lot so far in 2021. I just hope the rest of the year is better than that show. You all are doing some great things and some great work. I hope you’re OK. Be safe.
Michael Ogden is editor-in-chief for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.