Marshall leaves Stanford FCU CEO post to lead high-tech CUSO

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Stanford FCU President/CEO Warren Marshall is resigning from the credit union to lead the credit union's Internet banking CUSO. Marshall, who has been CEO of Stanford FCU since 1985, will become CEO of Stanford FCU's Internet banking CUSO, CyberBranch, formerly known as Cardinal Services, Inc. John Davis, Stanford FCU's executive vice president, was named CEO of the credit union. Marshall said he has sort of evolved into a technology person during his years at the credit union and is looking to follow through on a technology that originated from Stanford FCU. Stanford FCU is known worldwide for being the financial institution to process the first Net banking transaction back in 1995. Because of that fact and Marshall's focus on making the Internet a key channel for the credit union, Marshall has become an Internet banking guru in the industry and a popular speaker on the conference circuit. At press time he was just returning from delivering an Internet-related speech at the NetBank 2000 conference held in Tokyo. "Internet banking really did originate with credit unions. We did the first Internet transaction here in the early `90s on the Stanford computer system. The first Web-based banking program was created by one of our members (Ken Neighbors, a graduate engineering student)," said Marshall. Marshall said Neighbors sent him an e-mail with a URL on it that linked Marshall to a Web page Neighbors created that would become the backbone for Stanford FCU's initial Internet banking program. "I put my account number and password in and when I saw all my information I thought we had been hacked. He basically screenscraped my data," said Marshall. The credit union had a head start on all financials when it came to the Internet. Stanford University was one of the original nodes on the Internet. The university began utilizing the Internet in 1969. In the early `70s university students and professors routinely used e-mail to communicate. Many will also recognize the name of Stanford University's intranet-Stanford University Network (SUN), where the mega tech firm SUN Microsystems got its start. "The first Internet transmission was between Stanford, UCLA and the University of Utah. Back then I thought we would be doing just a few transactions through e-mail, which was obviously wrong," said Marshall. Now Marshall is putting his credit union CEO days behind him to help CyberBranch expand its client base. The CUSO currently has 130 CU clients, but Marshall said the CUSO will get more aggressive in marketing efforts. "We're all over the country and we even have five credit unions in Canada using CyberBranch. But we want to help more credit unions offer Internet banking because those that don't aren't going to be around too long." Despite the Internet craze of the last five years, Marshall thinks there are a lot of potential credit union clients in the marketplace. "It's less than 10% penetrated. I expect huge growth in the next three to four years. I think a lot of people think they don't have to do it. When I go out and speak people say `I understand why you need to to do it because of your membership, but we don't have to.' Everyone needs to do it," said Marshall. During Marshall's tenure the credit union grew from $45 million in assets to over $300 million in assets. He said the credit union has been growing at a 20% clip the last couple of years. "I had mixed feelings about leaving this job. I love credit unions, love the business. I've been involved with credit unions for 30 years. I was just taken over by the excitement of this technology," said Marshall. Prior to Marshall's appointment the CUSO was being run by Pete Kneisler, chief technology officer of Stanford FCU. Kneisler will now serve as senior vice president chief technology officer for the CUSO. The CUSO has about 30 employees and is headquartered across the street from the credit union's headquarters in Palo Alto. As for differentiators from other Net banking vendors, Marshall said CyberBranch will not price Internet banking on a per-member basis. "That penalizes the credit union that gets a lot of members to use Internet banking," said Marshall, who noted that CyberBranch prices its services with a flat monthly fee that doesn't consider number of users. -pgentile@cutimes.com