Industry insight from our team of credit union experts and thought leaders.
Whether for your executive team, board, or conference, CUCollaborate's team of experts offers a range of presentations covering various topics impacting the credit union industry.
In addition to more general areas of interest, we also provide custom presentations tailored specifically to your organization or event.
Description: Credit unions provide large and growing economic benefits to both their members and the communities they serve. However, measuring these benefits and impacts is not always straightforward.
Learn about the complex issues involved, the techniques that may be used to quantify credit unions’ roles in the financial lives of American consumers, and how benefits and impacts have grown in recent decades.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Lending, Business Development
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell or Luis G. Dopico
Description: Gain the tools needed to conquer the battlefield (of membership). FOM restraints negatively impact all credit unions, whether by limiting your total addressable market, lowering online application conversion rates, decreasing ROI on marketing, or simply because it confuses consumers.
This session discusses how to “hack,” or mitigate, the negative impact field of membership has on your ability to grow and includes:
–How to expand your field of membership to match strategic goals;
–How to increase your online application conversion rates;
–How to market exclusively to consumers who are eligible to join your credit union (regardless of your FOM);
–How to reduce the cost of member acquisition;
–How to reduce consumer confusion about credit union eligibility.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Lending, Business Development
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell or Chris Tissue
Description: An analysis and presentation on the different charter and field of membership options for your credit union, including:
–Overview of how FOM impacts credit unions' ability to achieve strategic objectives;
–Overview of chartering & FOM options;
–Reviewing an existing charter;
–Presenting pros and cons of best options and, if possible, recommendations.
Additional Resources Provided:
–Evaluation of pending legislation that may impact chartering & FOM options;
–Review of FOM expansion process.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Lending, Business Development
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell, Chris Tissue, Emily Hughes or Jason Rusten
Description: A long-term, member-centric and financial performance analysis of your credit union including:
–Balance sheet structure (loan and deposit types, investments and non-deposit liabilities);
–Financial performance and condition (ROA and capital ratios);
–Member-centric performance (interest rates compared to banks, product breadth, measures of credit inclusion, and member and asset growth);
–Comparisons against a certain state, region, type of credit union, or any individual credit union.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Lending
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico
Description: Financial consumers launch, join, and use credit unions to serve financial and social goals. In turn, credit unions are launched, thrive, and sometimes close. During the last one hundred years, the number of US credit unions grew from a handful to over twenty thousand, and then shrank to about five thousand.
Learn about long-term data on credit union formation, liquidation, and mergers, including how targets, acquirers, and non-merging credit unions compare across asset sizes, across relative sizes (e.g., mergers of equals vs. absorptions), and over time. Also discover the historical, average impacts of mergers across key performance metrics such as non-interest expenses, interest rates charged and paid, and growth.
Appropriate Audience:CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Finance, Operations
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell, Luis G. Dopico or Chris Tissue
Description: This presentation covers the many different ways credit unions benefit from a business model focused on serving low-income and underserved members. Further, an overview is provided on the methodology for implementing data and analytics in order to either attain or retain a Low-Income Designation from the NCUA.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Lending, Business Development
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell, Chris Tissue, Luis G. Dopico, Emily Hughes, Jason Rusten or Moriah Taylor
Description: Credit union members are served by boards of directors of varying sizes and with varying proportions of women and minorities.
Learn how credit union board sizes and the levels of women’s and minority presence evolved between 2012–2021 and where it stands today. Further, discover how this representation impacts member-centric credit union performance.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs and Board Members
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico and Moriah Taylor
Description: Discover an overview of long-term trends in credit unions’ conditions and performance between 1980–2021, including:
–Balance sheet structure (loan and deposit types, investments and non-deposit liabilities);
–Financial performance and condition (ROA and capital ratios);
–Member-centric performance (interest rates compared to banks, product breadth, measures of credit inclusion, and member and asset growth);
–Market structure (openings vs. closings, small vs. large credit unions, and credit unions vs. the overall economy).
The presentation can be readily updated to compare national levels against those for a state, region, type of credit union, or any individual credit union.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Lending
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico
Description: A detailed overview of macroeconomic conditions such as:
–Economic growth;
–Unemployment rates;
–Inflation rates;
–Government policy;
–Interest rates;
–The housing market;
–The auto market;
–Consumer credit markets.
Understand how these conditions relate to credit unions and their members, including long-term perspectives, current conditions, and the short- to medium-term outlooks.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Lending
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico
Description: Receive an update of statistical analyses on what factors are reliably linked to credit union asset growth, across asset size ranges between 1980–2021. Key factors explored include:
–Interest rates on deposits;
–Marketing expenses per assets;
–Measures of member service (non-interest expenses, branch network size, and workforce size, each per assets);
–Measures of product breadth;
–Field of membership expansion;
–Credit union age;
–Asset and liability structures.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Lending, Business Development
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico
Description: Receive an update of statistical analyses on what factors contributed to failures of credit unions and banks, across asset size ranges between 1980–2021. Key factors to be explored include:
–Capital ratios;
–Delinquency ratios;
–Non-interest income and net income (each per assets);
–Asset size and loan portfolio structure;
–Macroeconomic conditions;
–Asset growth.
The presentation highlights what we know about predicting failures, what we don’t know, and what we are unlikely to ever know.
Appropriate Audience: CEOs, Board Members, Strategy, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Lending, Business Development
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico
Description: A lighthearted overview of the historical origins of credit unions’ distinctive vocabulary.
Learn where the terms “credit unions,” “shares” and “dividends” all come from, in addition to the sometimes quirky origins of several other financial terms.
Appropriate Audience: Anyone!
Presenter(s): Luis G. Dopico
Description: In today’s increasingly competitive financial services landscape, many credit unions find themselves struggling to achieve meaningful and sustainable growth. This session offers a practical and provocative roadmap for how credit unions can stop spinning their wheels and start building lasting momentum.
You’ll learn:
• Why Most Credit Unions Struggle with Growth
A candid look at common pitfalls and organizational blind spots that keep credit unions stuck in a cycle of stagnation.
• The Data Behind Growth
An evidence-based overview of the statistical factors most reliably correlated with long-term asset growth—what the numbers actually say about what moves the needle.
• It’s the Member Benefit, Stupid
A powerful reminder that growth starts and ends with delivering exceptional, quantifiable value to members—and how to prove it with real data.
• It’s (Also) Your Employees, Stupid
Explore how culture, training, and internal alignment can supercharge or sabotage your growth efforts. Your people are your secret weapon—or your Achilles’ heel.
• Retention, Retention, Retention
Why holding onto your members is more important—and more profitable—than acquiring new ones, and what you can do to dramatically improve retention.
• Sustainable New Member Acquisition Fundamentals
Cut through the noise with strategies that drive real, low-cost new member acquisition.
• Strategic Infrastructure for Scalable Growth
How to build a foundation for organic growth through charter optimization, effective branch placement, and a high-impact digital banking experience.
• Unlocking Growth with Regulatory Tools
Discover how designations like the Low-Income Designation (LID) and certification as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) can be leveraged to access funding, expand capacity, and drive mission-aligned growth.
Appropriate Audience: All
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell
Description: While mergers in the credit union industry are often viewed through the lens of survival or scale, the most impactful mergers are those that put members at the center. This session explores how credit unions can approach mergers not as a last resort, but as a proactive strategy to maximize member value, expand impact, and ensure long-term viability.
You’ll learn:
The Ugly, the Bad, and the Good
Explore how to navigate the “Game without Rules” and ensure that the mergers you pursue unlock more value for members—and how to shift internal and external narratives accordingly.
Appropriate Audience: All
Presenter(s): Sam Brownell
Learn more about the presentations we offer or schedule your own by reaching out to our team via this form!
