Commentary

For more than 25 years, credit unions have used multi-featured, open-end lending as their preferred method to make non-real estate, secured consumer loans. Approximately half of all credit unions use this lending approach, and about 60% of credit unions with assets of more than $100 million use multi-featured, open-end lending...

Wal-Mart made news last month when it announced an expansion of its check-cashing and money order services and the rollout of a prepaid debit card for its customers. At first blush, this sounds like good news for consumers since Wal-Mart estimates that its fees would be about 25 to 50%...

Many industry observers believe the credit union industry is at a crossroads. While "they" may have disagreements about the whys and the wherefores of the matter, nearly all industry participants are in agreement that credit unions must grow in order to survive. This means coasting along doing business as usual...

Business lending for credit unions presents great opportunities--it also presents some significant challenges.

The first question I expect to hear when I arrive in Las Vegas for America's Credit Union Conference & Expo is "why did you change the name?"

It's no wonder that credit unions have found success offering a wide variety of loans to their members--after all, lending continues to be the foundation of our industry's product offerings. But in today's challenging environment, financial institutions are seeing a lackluster loan demand, as a result of a slower economy...

In recent years, growing losses from fraud have cost financial institutions millions upon millions of dollars. According to Visa International, gross fraud from debit and credit cards is up 29% in 2005 over 2004. TowerGroup predicts that fraud from debit cards alone will surpass $1 billion USD in 2006. Fraudsters...

Those words, uttered by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, may be coming back to haunt us today. Housing prices are falling, borrowers are defaulting, credit standards are tightening, and subprime lenders are going bankrupt. There is growing concern that the woes of the housing sector will impact the broader...