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Today’s episode is very special – we have a guest on that is well known in the financial world from a national media stage -- and we are unpacking everything about a new, highly valuable Filene member benefit offered through a new partnership between Filene and HerMoney.

Jean Chatzky is a former financial editor of NBC’s TODAY Show, bestselling author, award-winning personal finance journalist and advisor to major media companies & financial firms across the country. The company Jean founded, called HerMoney, makes one of the country’s leading taboos – talking about money-- more accessible, educational and fun, because of how they have figured out how to meet people where they are with the financial content they want.

Helping people connect, learn and take action on their finances with confidence is the winning strategy that enabled the company to gain more than 550,000 followers on social media, more than 250,000 podcast listens a month, 2 million annual website visitors, and more than 100,000 newsletter subscribers.

By partnering with Filene, HerMoney is bringing that same high-quality financial education content and customizing it for credit unions to personalize and share directly with their members every month. The goal of this effort is twofold – make life easier for every credit union marketing professional with a full plate, and to enable credit unions to engage members where they are while being more effective in their work to improve consumer financial well-being.

Sarah Lietz, Chief Experience Officer, MDC and Christie Kimbell, Chief Product Officer, Filene Research Institute provide insights and updates on what is happening in the most innovative pockets of the credit union and financial services space today and how growth-minded leaders can take advantage of innovative ideas to gain a new POV in 2023.

In this episode, we dig into their decades of exploration into learning, growing and keeping up with innovation personally, professional and organizationally.

Here are a few highlights on the insights they share:

Tip 1 – it’s okay to have help when things are overwhelming -- credit unions swim in a collaborative community and innovation support is out there for you if you want it. Our networks are our secret weapons to make our work better, faster and easier.

Tip 2 – it’s a mindset flip to move to thinking about your services embedded into experiences instead of spaces. Start envisioning your financial products serving moments.

Tip 3 – jump in and explore something you know nothing about, maybe it’s the Metaverse, maybe its NFTs. We all look funny high-fiving air from the outsiders POV but you can guarantee you’ll come out knowing more than when you went in.

Tip 4 – if you want to learn without being overwhelmed, find the ones that have expertise or at least something thought provoking to say about the ideas or concepts you want to explore. (This is how Christie and Sarah have become podcasting experts!)

Tip 5 – The key to being a learning organization is to be diligent about finding time and space to think and strategize. In a world where strategy is built in minutes, give yourself and your teams responsible for strategy the time they need to think it through.

Today’s conversation is about Financial Well Being… well actually to be more specific, financial well being for all.

For a substantial portion of households, day-to-day financial struggles remain profound in the face of persistent financial fragility and inequity. According to the Financial Health Network’s U.S. Financial Health Pulse, 2 out of 3 Americans are not financially healthy and stark disparities remain across gender, race/ethnicity, and income.

This is not new information, and it is frustrating to feel like this persistent problem will only continue to persist or worsen in today’s social, economic and political environment. But there are things that credit unions can do and are doing to make a difference in people’s lives, one member at a time.

Putting this consumer sentiment at the center of credit union decision-making and product and service delivery not only supports a credit union’s business goals and mission around advancing financial health and well-being through responsible lending products, higher savings rates, and financial education – but it also helps credit unions navigate supercharged digital transformation in a financial industry where fintechs have completely changed the competitive landscape.

Today's expert is Michelle Christie, Senior Manager, Financial Inclusion and Impact, at the National Credit Union Foundation—she brings a wealth of knowledge and boots on the ground tangible experience on how credit union are, and can continue to, advance financial well-being for all whom they serve.

Follow along with this interview by downloading the guide we reference at filene.org/557

Today’s conversation is about innovation. I know, right. Innovation this, innovation that, everyone is saying the word innovation so much, it's like the center square on a corporate jargon bingo card.

But here’s the thing: Jeffrey Robinson, Fellow for Filene’s Center of Excellence for Innovation and Incubation tells credit unions “If we don’t innovate, we die.” So, if it’s here to stay, and we do have to innovate – not just say that we are innovating -- what does that actually look like?

We put that question out to our most innovative credit union connections, the members of our i3 program. Earlier this year, they were tasked to scan the entire credit union environment and bring back the best innovations they saw happening. In the end, 36 i3ers on 8 teams picked their best finds and put them to the test. They presented on why what they found was the most innovative thing around and we asked you all to vote. After more than 1200 votes were cast, one innovation had the most votes – nearly 40% of the votes, in fact. That innovation? Bank Dora.

So in today’s episode we have Alaina Froton and Jeff Medeiros from Dora to tell us all about what Bank Dora is, why it is the embodiment of innovation, and how it is helping the credit union industry grow, thrive, and stay alive. Let’s get to it…

Let’s take a trip back in time to big.bright.minds 2021 where we ran into a very enthusiastic supporter of the Filene i3 program – Randy Stolp. Now, Randy promised he had a very unique and interesting story about how he came to be part of i3 and he definitely delivered.

But before we get to that…let’s look back in time again, this time if we look ALL the way back in history, we see the organizations that implement innovations are the ones that succeed. But to be that kind of organization, we need to grow and develop innovative people. This is exactly what Randy is doing, and he serves as a model for not only how organizations can develop their people but how individuals can take hold of their own destiny, push out of their comfort zone and get there even faster.

Filene’s latest edition of The Asterisk magazine is all about Innovation & Incubation. For more on innovating out of the comfort zone, check out The Asterisk Vol. 9 on Filene’s website at filene.org/theasterisk. In it, you will learn how Filene Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Robinson of our Center for Innovation & Incubation defines innovation. He says that “innovation is really applied creativity and that it’s nice to have ideas but turning them into practices, products or approaches that improve upon something else is really what innovation is about.

If you know much about the i3 program, you know that it is comprised of the industry’s most innovative leaders, so this episode is dedicated to the ones that push boundaries and expand their comfort zones. The secret sauce of Filene’s recipe for innovation is not just talking about ideas but rather taking them to the next step-- into incubation and maybe even, if they prove worthy, into implementation.

Dr. Robinson works with all sorts of organizations from start ups to fortune 500s and he reminds us that credit unions will need to focus on innovation within their organizations to remain competitive. He’s never been subtle about his point: if we don’t innovate, we die.

This may be true – and Chief Information Officer Randy Stolp from My Community Credit Union is doing something about that…here’s his story.

Today’s conversation is one you’ve likely thought about before if you work in the credit union industry -- we’re talking about credit unions and cryptocurrencies.

The purpose of this conversation is to enlighten our credit union listeners to what they need to know about the current state of digital assets and cryptocurrencies, what risks and opportunities exist, what credit unions are doing now, and what it might look like on the horizon.

This is a special conversation however, because we’re not just talking about it in hypotheticals and theories. We’ll start with one of the world’s leading experts in the topic, researcher Quinn DuPont, talking about how the pandemic changed the crypto landscape, advice for credit unions getting into crypto and more. We’re also lucky to have two credit union cryptocurrency practitioners -- Cynthia Schroeder and Joe Keller from Visions FCU--talking about what they’ve been up to in the space, and where they’re taking it next in support of their credit union’s strategies, growth goals and bottom line.

Thanks for listening and be sure to stick around till the end for some interesting ideas on use of NTFs and crypto wallets.