Merry Christmas to everyone! We are immensely blessed. I hope that you all enjoyed a wonderful Holiday with those you love! ⭐️🎄🎁 Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King

Golf rewards patience, discipline and consistency over the long haul. So does everything we do at infineo. Good to spend a few hours on the course with people who play the long game the right way.

Every institution we work with is trusting us with something important. That trust starts with the people in this room. Sharp, high-integrity, and building with the kind of care our credit union partners deserve. I’m proud of this group. #LifeNotes #LifeCoin

Incredibly blessed to lead and work with such a great group of people! My biggest takeaway from our annual infineo offsite meeting was that the culture our leadership team has cultivated and our people have bought into really is as good as it seems. Excited for whats to come! #LifeNotes #LifeCoin 🫡🚀📈

RIP to an amazing actor from the greatest show to ever air on television! @RjMitte from @BreakingBad

Citi and Coinbase expanded their partnership this week, and the structure of it is worth looking at closely. Merchants that bank with @Citi will be able to accept stablecoin payments at checkout. @coinbase handles the stablecoin side. The payment converts automatically, and Citi settles the funds as the bank of record. The merchant never has to hold a digital asset. The customer does not have to change how they pay. Each institution does the part it is good at. This is how I think it actually gets built. One side is not replacing the other. A bank and a digital asset platform are each bringing what the other lacks, and the customer barely notices the seam. Citi moves roughly $6 trillion a day. A bank at that scale building this into the ordinary business of getting paid tells you where this is heading. It is coming fast, and it is arriving in a responsible way. For credit unions, that is encouraging. The model taking shape rewards trusted institutions that partner well, and that has always been what this industry does best. pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/20…

Anyone who has heard me talk about AI knows where I stand. It is going to be very good for credit unions, and for other institutions as well. I think the ones that move on it will be better off than the ones that wait. Moving fast and moving carelessly are not the same thing, and moving carelessly is what gives moving fast a bad name. Every bad early deployment becomes a story that makes other boards hesitate. Shyna Mistry Punjani wrote a piece in CUInsight this week which lays out what a board should be asking. She chaired a credit union board herself, so she is writing from inside that seat. Her point is not to slow down. It is that credit unions sitting this out will lose ground to the ones adopting it well, and adopting it well is a governance question rather than a technology purchase. I think that is the right approach. Do the work first, then go. cuinsight.com/ai-can-draft-y…

The NCUA released second quarter data last week. Credit unions are in good shape. Assets crossed $2.5 trillion. Net worth ratio moved to 11.42 percent, up from 11.11 percent a year earlier. Annualized net income is running about 27 percent ahead of last year. Strong quarters change what a board is being asked to govern. Capital that accumulates faster than it is deployed is not a problem. It is a question, and it usually reaches the board before anyone has decided what to do with it. The credit unions answering that on their own terms, while the numbers are good, are in a better position than the ones answering it later. cutoday.info/Fresh-Today/Cre…

A few weeks ago @jacksonaltonh asked me whether blockchain technology is a threat to traditional finance. The early days of this space ran on us-versus-them, and that framing outlived its usefulness years ago. What we are seeing now is more of a collective adoption. The banks have now seen what it does, and they are committed. Twenty-one of the largest financial institutions in the world just announced they are building digital dollars together. Bank of America. Citi. Goldman Sachs. Wells Fargo. Deutsche Bank. UBS. Santander. MUFG. That is not interest. That is a commitment. They have seen where this goes and they are preparing their own futures with mass adoption in mind. pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/20…

I remember being confused as we were herded into the gym at Thurston Middle School in Westwood, MA. We were in the 8th grade. Our Principal asked us if we knew why we were there and then told us that America was under attack and New York City in particular had been hit. 25 years later, I have a wife and 4 kids and all I can think about is how many men like me went to catch a flight or go to work that day and lost their lives, leaving their children without a father or mother. For my generation, so many things are measured in relation to before and after 9/11. We all know that life was simpler before. And as my life grows more complicated each anniversary reminds me to try and focus on my family. One day my kids will measure their lives in time when dad was here and time after I’m gone. I pray that is many years from now. To all of those families who 25 years ago had to start measuring the time after… We Remember! 🇺🇸

Barclays now expects two more rate hikes this year. Last week they expected none. That reversal took one speech. Most executive benefit structures on credit union balance sheets were built for a rate environment that no longer exists. Designed once, approved by the board, and filed. The assumption that a good decision stays a good decision is doing a lot of quiet work. Reviewing the plan is not a referendum on the original choice. It is the ordinary work of governance. The only question is what leadership decides to do with what it finds. xitter.cf/Reuters/status/2094346…

“Flow State” soundtracks… It’s hard to get there… but I’ve found that the best way to get into a flow state is with a good soundtrack to listen to as a means to drown out the noise! Something that is instrumental. For me that soundtrack has long been “The Social Network” After many years I’ve found another soundtrack album that rivals the social network when it comes to staying locked in. Succession! Don’t believe me? Try it out. Let me know which one you like more! #FlowState #Focus #LockIn #TheSocialNetwork #Succession @SocialNetwork @succession

I sat down at the @Futurist_conf and made the point I keep coming back to. Institutions pledge life insurance as collateral and reinvest the capital. Decades of standard practice. Retail holds the same guaranteed asset with none of the same options. Why did it take this long?