The Minnesota Young Credit Union Professionals (MYCUP) last met on May 11, 2006, in Crystal. This meeting, attended by 26 individuals, was entitled the “No Dumb Questions” meeting. It allowed participants to anonymously submit questions about credit unions – things they’ve always wanted to know but didn’t want to ask.

The MYCUP Planning Committee assembled a panel of credit union experts to field the questions. Experts included:

  • CEO – Harry Carter, TopLine FCU Federal Credit Union
  • Operations – Kathy Harrington, Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union
  • HR – Heather Hernandez, Anoka Hennepin CU
  • Technology – Jon Hallberg, US Federal Credit Union
  • Business Lending – Jim Eret, City & County Credit Union
    Business Lending – Steve King, First Community Credit Union
  • Lending – Jay Gostonczik, General Mills Federal Credit Union
  • Compliance & Collections – Robbie Thompson, Minnesota Credit Union Network
  • Governmental Affairs – Joe Mathews, Minnesota Credit Union Network
  • Products & Services – Sue Miller, Minnesota Credit Union Network


Submitted questions included:

  • How is regulatory compliance being addressed at various credit unions? How do different sizes manage?

  • How are increasing costs of member services (online bill pay, etc) being paid for?

  • What type of training programs are being used successfully for new employees? Are there separate training programs for deposit, loan, admin, etc?

  • Besides fighting off bankers, what other major issues are on the agenda from a governmental affairs standpoint?

  • Has anyone found an efficient program/process for scanning documents?

  • I would like a clear and precise description of SEP IRAs. Also, are SEP simply types of contributions or are they separate IRA accounts all together? What are members required, if anything, to provide their credit union with when performing transactions inside of or under the name of SEP IRAs?

  • How does Shared Branching work?

  • What qualifications should a person have to be on the Board of Directors?

  • If you want to be on the management team of a credit union, what experiences/education should you have?

  • What is the first step in starting a credit union?

  • What is the preferred education background of a VP or CEO?

  • What are CUSOs?

  • What is the difference between a state and federal charter?

  • What are SEGs?

  • How do you change the credit union’s charter?

  • How do you change the credit union’s name?

  • When you have a calendar in place, how do you/should you react to knee-jerk initiatives?

  • Why does the IT guy always act like you are asking for his first born when you need information…isn’t that part of the job?

  • Why does just management get to go to conferences?

  • What kind of credit card programs are being used for MBLs (multiple users with one cumulative limit and one limit per card)?

  • What kind of Visa merchant programs are being used?

  • Where is a good place to look for salary/compensation ranges for various positions?

 

The following credit unions participated in the May MYCUP gathering:

City-County FCU (1) Novation CU (2)
Co-op CU of Montevideo (2) Star Choice CU (3)
First Community CU (1) Toro EFCU (1)
General Mills FCU (5) University of MN FCU (2)
Greater Minnesota CU (2) MnCUN (4)
North Memorial FCU (2)  

 

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