Our friends with the Southwest Lending Council asked us to remind all of our member credit unions and vendors of their conference coming up May 24-26.

Information and registration can be found here

The Chapter is once again offering scholarships to Southwest CUNA Management School for employees of member and affiliated credit unions. Beginning this year, we are honoring one of the best people we’ve ever known by renaming our scholarship as the Raymond Shands Memorial Scholarship. Raymond was a SWCMS alum, graduating in 1974.

The application and instructions can be downloaded here:

• Scholarship Application

For more information, conact: Nancy Croix-Stroud, President of First Class American CU and Chair of our scholarship committee.

Friday the 13th could be your lucky day. Attend the Brett Christensen lending training sponsored by your TCUL Lending Council and you may just find out how be a better lender. Here’s the details…

This session will cover specific mistakes that credit unions make in the management of the lending operation, the loan interview and the underwriting of loans that lead to low loan-to-share rations or higher than average loan losses.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Management’s misguided attempt to hire and train Superman and Superwoman.
• Why you need a good cop/bad cop sales model.
• Policies written for examiners, not members.
• A good loan interview is more than filling in blanks of a loan origination software package.
• Twenty underwriting mistakes you must avoid.

This timely training session is essential for your credit union’s lending success in this difficult economic climate.

When:

Friday, November 13, 2009 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Where:

Fort Worth Botanic Gardens

3220 Botanic Garden Blvd

Fort Worth, TX 76107-3496

(817) 871-7686

How Much:

TCUL Lending Council Members, $50.00

Non-TCUL Lending Council Members, $75.00 (non-member registration includes a 2009 TCUL Lending Council membership) Space is limited. Seating will be allocated to the first 45 registrations

Lunch will be provided

Register:

Registration is via internet only from the “Council Roundtable” section of the TCUL Lending Council home page

Questions: Contact Mike Delker VP, Credit Union Relations

We have a sales training session scheduled for the morning of May 20th at EECU. $25 includes breakfast and a great educational session. For more information or to RSVP, contact Raymond Shands.

The Chapter is again offering scholarships to Southwest CUNA Management School for employees of member and affiliated credit unions. The application and instructions can be downloaded here:

• Scholarship Application

For more information, conact: Nancy Croix-Stroud, President of First Class American CU and Chair of our scholarship committee.

To: CEOs in the Fort Worth Chapter Credit Unions

From: Pat Mott

I am personally inviting you or a representative from your credit union to attend Southwest Corporate FCU’s Financial Review Roundtable on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at the Radisson Fossil Creek (2540 Meacham Blvd.) from 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. The roundtable is free and open to all credit union management and volunteers.

The event is designed to give you an opportunity for expanded discussion of Southwest Corporate’s financial reports.

If you have not yet registered, you can do so at Southwest Corporate’s Site

I hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Pat Mott, President/CEO

Arlington Federal Credit Union

Southwest Corporate FCU Board Member

I was tempted to title this post “Misery Loves Company”, but local credit unions are uniting in their efforts to fight ever-increasing losses due to account fraud.

The initial meeting of the Chapter’s Fraud Roundtable will be on July 26th from 3 to 5 p.m. at Fort Worth City Credit Union at 2309 Montomery St.

The purpose of the group is to share experiences and successes credit unions have had with fraud. Please send your fraud experts with their stories, their examples and the tools they use. If your credit union doesn’t have a “fraud expert”, send someone anyway, we expect that everyone will benefit from the exchange.

This will be an open forum and will serve as a springboard to future meetings and training sessions. For more information contact Sandra Szymanski

Ever wonder how your Credit Union got where it is and where it will be tomorrow?

Meeting the challenges of the daily operations of your Credit Union seems like enough to worry about and now you have to find the resources and time for planning?

Come and learn the how and why of strategic planning for Small Credit Unions in a program titled Strategic Planning for Small Credit Unions Presented by Carl Banks from NCUA

This meeting, in conjunction with NCUA’s Office Of Small Credit Union Initiatives is developed to help the smaller credit union’s Managers and Board Members implement or refine their strategic planning process.

The meeting will be Thursday, May 24, 2007 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm in the Fort Worth City Credit Union Board Room at 2309 Montgomery Street just north of the Interstate 30 West. Take the Montgomery Street exit just after the University Street exit just west of downtown Fort Worth

Please RSVP to: Rita Dexter or call 817-921-9302 ext. 15

Southwest CUNA Management School is coming up sooner than one might think. Once again, the Chapter is offering scholarships to employees of member and affiliated credit unions. The application and instructions can be downloaded here:

• Scholarship Application

Nancy Croix-Stroud, President of First Class American CU serves as the Chair of our scholarship committee.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be presenting an afternoon technology training session for the Fort Worth Chapter called Web 2.0 and Credit Unions: Beyond Traditional Websites.

There’s a big shift occurring in how the Internet is being used by some very innovative credit unions and credit union organizations. Today’s “Web” has moved from being an information delivery system into serving as a collaboration system, thus the Web 2.0 moniker.

At a session with the Chapter last October, we fielded a lot of questions about blogs and wikis, and our upcoming training session will dive into these and other free tools that you can use to communicate and collaborate with members, coworkers, and other credit union innovators.

We’ll explain how credit unions are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the openness and transparency of these emerging technologies, and how you can use them to reach members, the underbanked, and the elusive young adult market in a more personal way online.

Also, we’re going to teach you how to manage the information available through these new tools without getting a case of “information overload.”

Hope to see you there!

This training session will be conducted by Matt Dean and Trey Reeme of Trabian, a website development and consulting company based out of Plano, Texas. Their recent client list includes industry innovators such as the Filene Research Institute, Stanford Federal Credit Union, and Fort Worth’s own Tarrant County Credit Union. Trabian also sponsors the Open Source CU credit union blog.