Commentary

In recent years, growing losses from fraud have cost financial institutions millions upon millions of dollars. According to Visa International, gross fraud from debit and credit cards is up 29% in 2005 over 2004. TowerGroup predicts that fraud from debit cards alone will surpass $1 billion USD in 2006. Fraudsters...

Those words, uttered by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, may be coming back to haunt us today. Housing prices are falling, borrowers are defaulting, credit standards are tightening, and subprime lenders are going bankrupt. There is growing concern that the woes of the housing sector will impact the broader...

Check fraud results in the loss of billions of dollars a year for banks, financial institutions and retailers, regardless of size or location. Identity falsification, in particular, formerly the specialty of professional forgers, has become widespread. Advances in technology are partly to blame. Highly-sophisticated and low-cost technology is now available...

There has been a significant amount of discussion about the actions taken by Wings Financial Credit Union to create a merger with Continental Federal Credit Union. Much of the discussion has been emotional and reactionary, focusing on the actions, the response, what should or will the NCUA do when and/or...

While the American economy is strong as a whole, there still remains a segment of our population that may never achieve the American dream of financial self-sufficiency, because they lack the awareness of and access to the necessary services offered by mainstream financial institutions. The credit union system was established...

Many in the financial services industry have kept a close eye on the federal preemption case Watters v. Wachovia brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in November 2006. It was the first banking preemption case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 10 years.

Not a week goes by without headline-grabbing news about a large company, university or government agency that has suffered a data breach potentially impacting thousands, if not millions of Americans. At an alarming rate, consumers' personal information is being exploited through credit card fraud and a host of identity theft...

I truly believe that the soul of the credit union movement, which is its philosophy, is still alive and well, but over the past several years it has suffered from serious and identifiable erosion. I want to share some of the things I learned during my career that helped me...