Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

Credit unions definitely find benefit from having "likely" partners--you know, partners you would expect them to have. But yesterday I got the idea that they might also find benefit from partners that might seem less likely at first.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Over the past several months, there has been much talk of gloom and doom regarding the collapse of the sub-prime market. Then yesterday on Marketplace on public radio, I heard that the members of the National Association of Business Economics say that defaults on sub-prime loans are the greatest threat to our economy, even greater than terrorism. That's pretty grim. I needed some good news...a little cheer.

By Mary Arnold

In "Fringe Players or Market Disruptors?" I wrote about how easily an established firm can be unseated by a new entrant to the marketplace. The new entrant chooses a niche and, without the legacy systems, history and broad clientele of the established firm to contend with, is able to quickly make inroads.

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

All ye iPhone owners, please weigh in. The July 31 Forrester Report, "The Mobile Web Vs. the Web on an iPhone: iPhone Wins in a Blowout," suggests the beginning of the end of the mobile banking world as we know it. In particular, the report says:

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Have you thought about starting a blog for your credit union, but have been unimpressed with the free blogging tools available? Robbie Wright at The Life and Times of a Credit Union Employee has created a cool solution. He has set up cublogs.org, a free blog hosting site for the credit union industry that offers more flexibility and better features than Blogger or wordpress.com. Check it out.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

OK, I admit it. I will likely soon have a credit card from Bank of America.

How I came to be expecting this card in the mail is kind of a long story, full confession below.

The important takeaways from my confession, I think, are the evidence it provides that 1) affinity cards make a difference, 2) people really do hold on to their first credit cards a long time, 3) disgruntled customers may be expensive customers, and 4) that the big banks can afford to hire really able marketers.

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

I'm certainly not the first to say that producing podcasts might not yet be low-hanging fruit for most credit unions. Check out Tony Mannor's excellent post on CU Hype.

But a personal experience and some recent reading made me want to join the conversation about the "to podcast or not to podcast" issue.

By Thomas C. Davis

The credit union industry is an aging industry characterized by slow growth, consolidation, and commodity products and services. But an industry does not age because of slow growth or even its mature position on the growth curve. An industry ages because it quits pursuing an ideal—or, perhaps, fails to pursue its ideal in a new, meaningful way.

By Mary Arnold

I'm not the only CUESer inspired to blog about insights from Advanced Leadership Institute at Harvard Business School. If you haven't done so already, check out "There's Proof Small Credit Unions Can Thrive" by my colleague Christopher Stevenson on the CUES Nexus blog.