On April 4th – 6th, the National Credit Union Collectors Alliance (NCUCA), held it’s Fourth Annual Summit and training event at the Venetian Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. With over 200 attendees representing credit unions from all across the nation and a gallery of highly educational and entertaining speakers, this event lived up to it’s billing and is quickly becoming the focal annual credit union collections event of the year.
Schools First CU President and former CUNA President, Bill Cheney, opened the event with a speech discussing the state of the credit union movement and its impact on the economy. As stated, the credit union industry accounts for a 7% market share in banking activity and employs over 883K people.
Ann Davidson, followed up with a training session focused on fraud and the growing trends in fraud citing that “chipless” ATM and credit cards are still a large source of fraud transactions.
Before lunch, a speakers panel consisting of a wide breadth of credit union lending and collections leaders engaged the crowd on topics which were
relevant in their respective shops. James Baldwin of $10B Ogden Utah Credit Union discussed the regulatory burdens of maintaining a CFPB compliant complaint management process.
Two breakout sessions were conducted with Michael Cochrum of CUBI PRO presenting on data
analytics and NCUCA President and VP of Collections and Risk Management at LAFCU, Art Sookazian leading a discussion of collector performance metrics where he presented two performance measuring models utilized by LAFCU and Hyundai Finance that formulaically created a point value system to contacts, right contacts, promises to pay and fulfilled promises that geared toward two differing values of efficiency and production.
Closing out the first day, Dan Arkell of CU Lending Advice kept everyone in their seats with his presentation illustrating the importance of lending and collections to the credit union movement and stated that “Lending is the most important thing credit unions do.”
After the full day of training, vendors and collectors enjoyed the vendor night event where vendors and credit unions were encouraged to network and find ways to maximize efficiencies by exploring products available in the market.
Bruce Pearson, Senior Partner at Styskal, Wiese & Melchione, LLP and a faculty member of the Western CUNA Management School, providing insight into what Examiners are currently focused on during annual exams as well as a brief discussion on the fruitlessness of the NCUA’s appeals process.
One of the most engaging and entertaining parts of the day, was from JAG Investigation owner and 25 renowned cyber tracking expert, Michele
Stuart’s presentation on developing “actionable intelligence” from social media. Her demonstration of the stored tracking data on tracked and maintained on mobile phones was frightening. If you own a Samsung, you’d want to smash it with a hammer afterwards. Anyone involved in skip tracing owes it to themselves to catch one of Michele’s presentations. Very illuminating and, she’s really fun.
(Note to self) Don’t get on Michelle Stuart’s bad side.
Breakout sessions were conducted again, with attorney Karel Rocha of Prenovost, Normandin, Bergh and Dawe leading an open discussion on the new Military Lending Act, it’s broader scope and it’s applications to issues such as negative equity trade and ancillary products purchases.
Closing out the event was the ever present and always entertaining attorney, Eric North of Moore,
Brewer, Jones, Tyler and North. Eric, well known for his webinars and regional legal compliance seminars, led a deep dive discussion on the TCPA, MLA and changes to the CFPB. If you haven’t attended one of Eric’s webinars or better yet, in person presentations, you’ve been missing out on the most entertaining, engaging and informative presenters in the industry.
This was my first year in attendance at the NCUCA Conference and likely will not be my last. This event has grown substantially since it’s inception thanks to the hard work of the NCUCA led by Art Sookazian and the volunteer board members,
· Jade Oesterle of Vantage West CU of Arizona
· Benjamin Lopez of Alta Vista CU of Redlands, CA
· Alexander Rodriguez of CU of Southern California
· Rudy Martin of First City CU of Los Angeles
· Brian Quintana of Members Cooperative CU, Duluth, MN
· Dana Jaramillo of Rio Grande CU in Albuquerque, NM
· Beverley Fritton of Silver State Schools CU of Las Vegas, NV
· Larry Jimenez of Tulsa FCU in Tulsa, OK
· David Sandoval of Northrup Grumman FCU of Gardena, CA
· Danny Guerrero of County Schools FCU in Ventura, CA
The NCUCA is always looking for new board members so, if interested please reach out to them!
Of course, no event of this scale would be possible without the sponsorship and support of the many vendors and sponsors in attendance. This year’s lead sponsors were Allied Solutions, National Powersports Auctions, and South Bay Remarketing Services.
Next year’s event is scheduled at the Bellagio Resort Casino in Las Vegas April 15-17, 2019, so be sure to budget and schedule accordingly. Year five will be even bigger and better than the last four!
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