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NACUSO, the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations, redesigned their site a while back and made their new blog the main attraction.  If you haven’t already, go check out the newly-minted site.  I can’t wait to get some good conversations going about CUSO’s like we had on Andy’s blog a while back!

Lending Tree is getting sued for a dreaded, TJ-Max-esqe data breach.  Apparently caused by some of their partners, Lending Tree managed to lose names and social security numbers for a number of their clients.  It serves a great reminder, that even the biggest institutions are not immune for data theft.  This is particularly important to remember when dealing with all of the new PFM’s on the scene. 

While we love Wesabe and Mint, data breaches can happen to anyone.  The services Mint provides are really cool and pretty, but what happens if they were to get breached for whatever reason.  A Mint employee has a weak password that gets cracked, Yodlee screws up and loses info; it could be anything.  Wesabe is in a little better shape just because they provide alternative methods of importing your data, but if you import your data automatically, your are still storing your info with them.  Both companies do go out of their way to inform their users about the data security they have in place, but just as Lending Tree had many of the same technologies and processes, they won’t be immune forever.

I personally use both Mint and Wesabe and I have faith that they are doing everything possible to prevent bad things from happening.  Buy go ask the old CTO of TJ Max and I’m sure he thought they were doing a good job protecting their data.

I went to Iron Man this weekend with a goody buddy from work and his 5 year old son.  As I’m writing this, another co-worker came up and asked me if I had seen it.  He and his son went to the movie this weekend as well!  It was a great movie and very entertaining.  But the funny thing is everyone I know who saw it this weekend, from age 5 to 38, loved the movie.  So what does it take to create a movie that is loved by people in different generations?

After seeing the movie, I got to thinking about what really makes this movie likable by both a 5 year old and a 40 year old.  The five year old likes the action (everyone wanted to be able to fly as a kid) and the grown ups enjoy the action, humor, and plot.  Is it even possible to appeal to multiple generations of members with financial products?  Why couldn’t a checking account meet the needs of everybody?  Some would say it seems easy for movie to do with the success of movies like Transformers, Ice Age, and Shrek.  Each of those movies has a little something in it for each generation that the other generations seem to not pick up on.

Is it even feasible for credit unions to be able to create such a versatile product that can appeal to many generations at one time or are we stuck creating products for each new generation?

Ever wondered what Deposit Reclassification really is or how in the world does it work?  Here is the presentation we will be giving at the CUES Experience in Minneapolis next month. Feedback is always appreciated!

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I stumbled across this MasterCard press release today about their new debit processing platform.  Low and behold, Security Service FCU will be the first FI to use the new product.  I just love seeing credit unions being first adopters with nationally recognized companies implementing a product of this scope.  Now I can’t wait to see exactly how MasterCard’s new processing platform works and the efficiency improvements that are gained from it.

Back in May 2007, the Federal Reserve issued a legal opinion on Deposit Reclassification and how it should be administered in financial institutions.  If you feel like reading a legal opinion on a really fun topic, follow the link.  The longer I work in the CU world, the more my opinion on innovation grows stronger.  While I hate the fact that we’re more regulated then airlines and the regulators are very stuck in the past, being in such an locked down environment forces people to be innovative to succeed.