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There’s $140 billion in unclaimed federal benefits and assistance for households in need.

That’s a mountain of money.

Why is it unclaimed? Sometimes it’s because folks just don’t know it exists. Often it’s because the process of applying for it can be daunting - especially for the people who need it most.

Enter Starlight, a New York based startup helmed by Catherine Xu and Shreenath Regunathan, both tech geeks.

Starlight’s aim is to catalog the available monies, make a database that’s easy to search and create tools to make it easy to apply for monies.

What’s in it for credit unions? Think about it. Help a member find monies that will let that member live better and move up the economic ladder and at least two things happen: the member will have strengthened loyalty to the credit union that assisted and that member also may qualify for more credit union products, maybe a car loan or a credit card.

How cool is that?

Four credit unions already are signed up, more are in the queue and TruStage (nee CUNA Mutual) is an investor.

This conversation started back at the CU 2.0 live event in Phoenix that co founder Cat Hu attended and it had to become a podcast because it blends geekiness with doing social good.

Listen up.

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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Call this podcast what you think you know about SERPs but that’s not fact.

Two truths are plain: senior credit union executives want to secure their retirement much as their for profit sector peers do AND there just is a lot of confusion about SERPs - supplemental retirement plans.

A big reason for this show is that in it Kirk Kordelesi, onetime CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union, one of the nation’s largest, and now a partner with PARC Street, shines a bright light on how split dollar, whole life SERPs work and how they differ from IUL plans, Index Universal Life.

A bottomline difference is that a split dollar SERP will produce a stable return whereas there is structural variability built into the results an IUL will produce.

Find out more about that in this webinar with expert Bobby Samuelson and PARC Street Partners.

Dive deeper into what Kordeleski has said about executive retirement plans in credit unions in the two dozen plus podcasts we’ve recorded. Consider this must listening for credit union c-suiters, board members, and also executive recruiters.

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On any list of my personal favorite CU 2.0 podcasts is episode 149 - it dropped May 2021 - with Samira Rajan, CEO of the Brooklyn Cooperative, a small, scrappy credit union.

How did a Bryan Mawr graduate - who also has a master’s from Harvard's Kennedy School - wind up in Bushwick at a tiny credit union?

She started there in 2001 as a volunteer and these many years later she’s the CEO.

Hers is a brilliant credit union story.

Listen up.