The credit union share of auto loans fell sharply in 2023, down almost 5% from 2022 numbers tracked by Experian.

Does this augur a grim future for credit unions when it comes to financing cars? Or was it a blip on the screen?

On the show is Will Ely, a solutions architect at Earnix, where he consults with clients seeking more effective auto lending strategies.

According to Ely, data is king of this mountain. In particular he points to pricing analytics as the key to unlocking more and better loans.

We also discuss why some credit unions have pulled away from indirect auto lending and, surprise, why super prime borrowers aren't always the best for a credit union.

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

Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast Greatest Hits show.

There are over 300 shows in the library and yet a reality in the podcast business is that few of us ever even look at more than maybe the half dozen most recent shows. That’s why we are going to resurface some of the best and most popular shows as Greatest Hits.

This is show #6 Matthew Butler on Charitable Donation Accounts and, no, I hadn’t heard of it either until I talked with Butler.

I like it when people bring me something I hadn’t heard of it so I put him on the show.

Now I’m resurfacing it as Greatest Hit #7.

Here’s why: a CDA allows a credit union to make investments in otherwise impermissible vehicles where the kicker is that 51% of returns have to be distributed as charitable donations (that presently means a 501 C 3). But the credit union can retain the remaining 49% for its own uses.

Why isn’t your credit union doing this? Probably because you had never heard of it either.

And now you have.

Listen up.

The answers you need are in the data. Of course you know that. But do you know - really know - how to mine the data you have, and you have a lot, and drill down to the information you need today?

On the show is Anurag Mukherjee, the Head of the Analytics practice for Credit Unions & Community Banks at EXL, a large global analytics and digital solutions consulting firm headquartered in New York.

What sold me on doing this show was when I poked around the EXL website and landed on a case study where EXL worked with DCU, the big Massachusetts based credit union, to transform how the institution managed and used its data. Here’s the concluding sentence of the case study: “Within six months, the IT team migrated 30 months of data consisting of over 5.8 billion documents into Amazon Redshift for analysis. The data is refreshed each night, enabling the business teams to access up-to-date information on which to base decisions. In addition, each sales executive has a self-service dashboard delivering them the insights they need to better support their clients.”

For many years I have looked upon DCU as a genuine tech leader among credit unions and if DCU was turning to EXL for help in organizing its data I had to know more about the company.

In this show we hear about the work EXL did for DCU but also about what all credit unions need to do to prosper in an ever more competitive environment. We also hear about a chronic credit union problem - data from many different tech vendors often is siloed and unavailable to use in other systems from other vendors.

Throughout this is an upbeat, optimistic show where the credit union future is depicted as bright - if the institutions digitize and keep digitizing to let them compete against everything from Chase to Chime.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

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