Chuck Fagan may be less than year into his new to his job as president/CEO of PSCU, but he's already leading the transformation of an organization that's pouring money into technology in an effort to stay competitive in an increasingly digital market.

Fagan's tenure with the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based PSCU goes back years – 16, in fact. He spent much of that time leading the CUSO's national sales and client relationship teams and helping bring emerging payments technologies to credit unions. In early 2013, Fagan jumped to CUES, where he served as CEO. But by this spring, he was back at PSCU – this time at the helm. And like anyone who comes home after a long absence, Fagan said he felt the warm comfort of familiar faces and surroundings. But some things had changed while he was gone, and there was work to do.

When he rejoined PSCU in spring 2015, Fagan's first priority was fostering and building relationships, both within PSCU and also with credit unions – some of which left the CUSO while PSCU was under former President/CEO Mike Kelly, who departed in February. Fagan declined to say how many credit unions pulled their business, calling it “a handful.”

The EMV transition and the Oct. 1 liability shift also loomed at the time, and it turned out few credit unions proved ready, according to a CU Times–CSCU study conducted in November. By Oct. 1, a significant majority of PSCU's members had transitioned their credit cards in time, though only between five and 10 are ready on debit, Fagan said. Now much of the migration will occur in 2016, he noted.

But time flies, especially in the tech world, and Fagan said he was shocked by how quickly cybersecurity and enterprise risk management jumped up PSCU's priority list in his absence. Technology investments more than doubled during that time.

Some of those investments are resulting in new products. In April, for example, PSCU launched DataVue, a tool on its Member Insight platform that gives member credit unions the ability to analyze where members use their cards and how much they spend in a given period. DataVue includes a module called CommunityVue, which allows credit unions to customize and share the templates they use to mine the data.

“We've got 87 credit unions on the platform, about 620 enrolled users, and 215 that specifically access the CommunityVue site,” Fagan said. “It's very encouraging to see credit unions starting to dig into the data, because there is so much value in that, and we want to make that available to them.”

And in June, PSCU and Corporate One FCU launched Clique, which is an EMV-ready card program for small to mid-size credit unions.

“It's resulted in 60 credit unions on their debit platform with us and 10 to 12 credit unions on the credit side,” he said. “That's equated it to 83,000 debit accounts and 8,000 credit card accounts. The target market is really $200 million and below that we're going after.”

Fraud is on Fagan's mind, too. Criminals attempt to breach the organization on a regular basis, he said.

“If you ask me the thing that would keep me up at night, the attempts to hack into organizations like PSCU and the frequency of that – it's a scary thought,” he said.

Fagan said PSCU's fraud-loss-to-sales ratio is around $0.08 per $100 spent, which he said is below the industry average of about $0.14 per $100 spent, in part because PSCU uses human fraud-detection staffers 24/7 rather than relegating the work to automation on the weekends and evenings.

Fagan said he forged stronger relationships with CO-OP while at CUES and hopes to maintain those relationships – especially on the fraud front – now that he's at PSCU, he said.

“Five or so years ago, maybe even a little bit longer, we had a fraud advisory group amongst all the players that support the credit union industry,” he explained. “PSCU was an initial part in that effort. It has not met in some time, but the same players, I think, could be pulled together quickly.”

His goal is to share fraud data and intelligence.

“If I have a trend that I think will help any of those other organizations build strategies to save credit union money from being fraudulently taken, all day long I'll make those phone calls,” he explained. “And I think they would as well. I think that's a great example of areas where we don't really compete with one another – we compete with the people trying to hack into the systems.”

But as the industry becomes increasingly tech-focused, Fagan said it can be difficult to determine what initiatives really matter, how much to put behind them, and how to balance technology's demands with the needs of the rest of the business. He and a team dubbed “the innovation group” closely watch the fintech field, which is birthing myriad payment startups aimed at disrupting everything about how money moves. Members of his IT team also sit in on meetings with credit unions so they understand day-to-day technology issues, and through PSCU's IT advisory group, chief information officers from 16 to 20 credit unions gather twice a year to learn from each other.

Perhaps the biggest task Fagan has faced since returning to PSCU, however, is taking a closer look at the CUSO's workforce of more than 1,700. His time at CUES gave him fresh eyes and new ideas, he said.

“I got a great, great perspective of the overall industry, but I also learned just how important it is to develop talent,” he said. “Coming back here, we've already spent a lot of time assessing our talent throughout the organization and really investing in our people. We want to make sure that throughout PSCU, our people believe in the industry that we support, that they're engaged with us, and that they see a career with our organization. I don't know if I fully grasped the importance of that when I was here before. Obviously being in the CEO role, that is hugely important to me, and I'm sure our team is tired of hearing me talk about that already.”

That involved reviewing employee assessments and training, he added.

“We've got to identify what our team's strengths are, and let's take those strengths and try and maximize them,” he said. “And if you have a particular weakness, then let's make sure you're paired up with somebody who offsets that weakness. That's a big part of it.”

He added, “I don't think it's good enough anymore to bring in a speaker and have that speaker talk to a large group and call that training. Certainly we're going to do that, but I think there has to be customized programs for people that you're going to invest in. That's what we're trying to understand: What the employee's trying to accomplish in their career, and take that and match it with their strengths. If there are other strengths that we need to develop, then let's put a customized approach together to try and develop that person to be an even greater asset to PSCU and our credit unions and their members when we're done with it.”

It's a lot to do in just a few months, but as he nears the one-year mark as CEO, Fagan is looking ahead. Apple Pay is already part of the PSCU ecosystem, but over the next few months, PSCU also plans to enable its members to use Android Pay and Samsung Pay, he said. It's also about to launch QuickAssist, which gives frontline staff access to payments information from core processor screens in a web environment. And PSCU is beta testing MemberConnect 2.0, which is an updated version of its client portal that essentially gives credit unions administrative access to reports, bill pay system users and call centers.

“One of the great quotes that I've seen over the years was at a credit union CEO's office that said, 'If you build it, they might come. If you build it with them, they're already there.' We are really trying to concentrate that way,” he said.

Instant Insights /

Fagan: Fighting Fraud and Fostering Partnerships

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