Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

I love our national parks, so when I had a chance to visit the Everglades during NAFCU's CEOs and Senior Executives Conference, I jumped at the chance. 

As you can see, I had a chance to hold a young alligator. Luckily, the picture does not show my blood pressure or my shaking legs.

The park ranger noted an interesting fact. While many are terrified of alligators, gators kill far fewer people each year than vending machines. In fact, 38 people have fallen victim to vending machines since 1978. I can't get alligator vs. vending machine statistics, but allegedly, alligators killed 9 people from 1999 through 2014.

So the ranger may very well be correct. 

Now, that's not the whole story.

I'm guessing most of you have at least one vending machine where you work. And I'm hoping that most of you do not have an alligator inside your office. So people interact with far more vending machines than alligators every day.

But still, the perceived risk between the two is interesting. What scares us more? 

And so it is for credit unions. Where is our risk?

• Compliance?
• Interest rates?
• Reputation?
• Credit?
• Strategy?
• Transaction risk?
• Liquidity?

Does one loom larger? What caused more problems in the past? Is that indicative of the future?

Your credit union may have a risk officer. Get to know him or her. Their job is to identify, measure, manage and control risk. 

But much like the story of the alligator and the vending machine, accurately measuring risk is a tough job. The more information a risk officer gets, the better. 

NAFCU has a Risk Management Seminar scheduled for this July. Our goal is to help those who help credit unions by managing risk. We hope to see you there.

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And speaking of risk, I hope your credit union is prepping for CECL. NAFCU published a CECL study to help. Please make sure whoever is prepping for CECL at your credit union sees this study.