Filed under: Current Issues in Credit Unions, humor | Tags: credit unions, humor, shari storm
Shari Storm helps Faith, Guy, Katherine & Rob finish out the year. We discuss Shari’s 23 Credit Union Truths and have a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Happy New Year!
The CIiCU hosts are:
Brian Witt
Hal Scoggins
Farleigh Wada Witt,
Attorneys at Law
121 SW Morrison Street, Suite 600
Portland, Oregon 97204
Telephone: 503-228-6044 Fax: 503-228-1741
http://www.fwwlaw.com
Guy Messick
Katherine Weber
Messick & Weber P.C.
211 North Olive Street
Media, PA 19063
Telephone 610-891-9000 Fax 610-891-9008
http://www.cusolaw.com
Faith Anderson
American Airlines Credit Union
P.O. Box 619001
MD 2100
DFW Airport, TX
75261-9001
(800) 533-0035
https://www.aacreditunion.org/default.asp
Robert Rutkowski
Shareholder
Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., L.P.A.
323 W. Lakeside Avenue, Suite 200
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
Telephone: 216-739-5004 Fax: 216-739-5642
http://www.thatcreditunionblog.com
http://www.weltman.com
Subcribe to the show via iTunes Music Store:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=151785964&s=143441
Filed under: credit unions
By Shari Storm
I loved The 23 Adult Truths that made its way around the internet a few weeks ago. I took a try at compiling 23 Credit Union Truths. I hope you enjoy.
1. Nobody ever reads your newsletter. That is, unless it has an error. Then everyone reads it.
2. ALM stands for Accountants Love Marketing.
3. Why does thinking look so much like not-doing-work?
4. Webinars are the spawn of the devil.
5. The higher up the org chart you go, the fewer vendor decisions you make but the more sales calls you get.
6. A business continuity plan never survives contact with a crisis.
7. Blackberries have made our mandatory five consecutive days impossible.
8. For your entire career, you are only allotted one use of the red exclamation mark for the priority of an email. Use it wisely.
9. You can spend $2 million pleading with your members to change their behavior. Charge a $2 fee and they change overnight. In other words, $2 can often accomplish what $2 million cannot.
10. I’ve often read sentences like this: “I found it!” she cried. I’ve never, in my entire life, heard a person use the word ‘cried’ as a synonym for ‘said’. It’s a word that exists only on paper.
11. There ought to be a name for that person who sends you an email and then beats the email to your office and asks you if you’ve read it yet.
12. Why can a sound wake you up but not a smell?
13. There are some meetings, that when cancelled, make you feel like you just found a twenty dollar bill on the street.
14. If you are going to send a nasty email or IM about someone, you have an 88% chance of sending it to them by mistake.
15. While it may be true that what gets measured gets done, it is also true that what is fun gets done before that.
16. I sometimes long for days when life was simpler and my copy machine just made copies.
17. Someone should do a study on why a whole group of people will periodically show up to work in the same color. Then someone should do a study about why one person is always compelled to say, “Looks like you got the memo.”
18. Why do emails still have a cc: line? 65% of the people we work with have no idea what a carbon copy is.
19. Some people need to step away from the listservs.
20. Face it, we are never going to get our members to understand the difference between a pin and pen transaction, let alone care about it.
21. Yesterday I had to print an email and the “think before you print” tag line made the email print on two pages, rather than one. Now that’s irony.
22. Can we just make effect and affect the same word and get on with it?
23. Mark Twain would have been perfect on Twitter. Of course, he never would have written The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, had he been on Twitter.
Shari Storm is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Verity Federal Credit Union and is the author of the book “Motherhood is the New MBA”, available here:
Last night, My family and I attended our 14th Cleveland Chapter holiday party. I meant to bring my Nikon, but of course I forgot so all I have to show for it is this picture taken hastily from my iPhone. You can’t see Santa, you can barely even see all the kids lined up. This photo is quite possibly the worst credit union event picture I’ve ever taken. The Pulitzer prize is going to elude me again this year, I fear.
In any event, the evening is always very special. It’s one instance where “we’ve always done it that way” still has its charm.
Events like this illustrate why the credit union movement is a movement and why credit unions are more than just banking service vendors. It’s built into the DNA from the credit unions to the leagues to the trade organizations and even the regulators themselves. Think I am overstating it? Multiply this by every chapter across the United States.
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Shari Storm has been irrepressibly productive recently and should have an awesome piece on these pages this Friday. You know it’s the holiday season when we struggle mightily to come up with literally anything to make our 3 post a week deadline. We are also going to try mightily to get our podcast in this month despite the holidays.
Filed under: mortgages
By Gregory A. Anglewicz, Esq.
On November 14, 2011, the City of Cleveland, Ohio passed two emergency ordinances that will have a substantial impact on lenders and other entities that take title to real estate within the city. These ordinances, which went into effect on November 16, 2011, created criminal liability for entities not registered with the State of Ohio and extended financial liability for nuisance abatement beyond the sale of a property.
The first ordinance, Ordinance 1519-11 (Cleveland Codified Ordinances Sections 367.08 and 3103.09) addresses the cost and liability related to nuisance abatement in the City of Cleveland. The ordinance makes any party in the chain of title, from the time of the service of the notice of condemnation, “joint and severally” liable for any costs associated with the demolition of the property. Under this provision, the city may seek the full cost of demolition, along with expenses for prosecution and collection.
This ordinance also identifies a wide range of fees including “attorneys (sic) fees, costs of inspection, administrative staff and support staff, property maintenance costs, court costs, title search fees, process server fees, skip tracing expenses, and costs of collection or prosecution, including discovery and deposition expenses” as the type of expenses that can be included in those charged to the property owner for failing to demolish, repair, alter, secure or board, or otherwise abate any other nuisance. It is, however, unclear as to whether those costs not associated with the demolition of a property may be assessed to a prior party in title.
A statement of the above mentioned costs now can be made either to the last known address of the owner or to the tax mailing address listed with Cuyahoga County. No actual service or receipt of this statement is required by the ordinance.
Once the statement is sent, the owner has thirty (30) days to make payment. Should the owner fail to do so, these costs can be certified as a tax assessment against the property. In addition, the ordinance gives the City Law Director the authority to take any action deemed, in his/her sole discretion, as necessary to recover these costs. Charges for these actions, including fees for outside counsel for collection actions, civil actions, and post judgment execution, will also be charged to the owner or other responsible party.
This ordinance expands the scope of the type of fees the city may recoup and extends its reach back beyond a sale to a third party. It is recommended that property conditions and indemnifications be taken into account when acquiring and disposing of real estate within the City of Cleveland.
The second ordinance, Ordinance 1520-11 (Cleveland Codified Ordinances Sections 3103.092 and 367.131) creates a prohibition against business entities not registered with the Secretary of State from owning, buying, selling or transferring real estate in the City of Cleveland.
Under this ordinance, the failure of a domestic or foreign corporation, partnership, limited-liability company, or other business entity to make the proper filings with the Ohio Secretary of State, including the identification of a statutory agent, is now a first-degree misdemeanor. The ordinance goes on to extend criminal liability to any officer transacting business on behalf of the business entity. Under this provision, the officer who executes documentation to further the purchase, sale ownership or transfer of real estate would also be guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor. Finally, this ordinance makes each property bought, sold, owned, or transferred a separate criminal offense.
The ordinance creates substantial criminal liability for lenders and their officers who acquire, own, or dispose of real estate in the City of Cleveland. A first-degree misdemeanor is punishable by imprisonment up to six months and/or up to a $1,000 fine.
Beyond the risk to the business entity and its officers, there may be a potential risk of criminal liability for other parties for aiding and abetting a crime by facilitating the sale, purchase, ownership or transfer of real estate in the City of Cleveland.
It is strongly recommended that a thorough review for full compliance with the registration, organization and/or incorporation laws of Ohio be performed for any entity that will hold title to real estate in the City of Cleveland.
To view the content of Cleveland Codified Ordinances 3103.09 and 3103.092 and Cleveland Codified Ordinances 367.08 and 367.131, go here.
If you have any questions on this matter, please contact Mr. Gregory A. Anglewicz, Esq. Greg practices in the Real Estate Default Group, concentrating on title work and REO closing services in the Cleveland and Chicago offices as the supervising attorney of Thoroughbred Title Agency, Inc., a division of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., LPA. Greg can be reached at 216.685.1137 and ganglewicz@weltman.com.
Filed under: operations
By Shari Storm
Telling Everyone What You Only Need to Tell One
We’ve all been there. You’ve got that employee whose isn’t doing what they are supposed to do. Maybe it’s the dress code- they wear things that are unprofessional or distracting. Telling someone to dress differently is a tough conversation. So instead, you send a memo to your whole staff and remind them of the dress code guidelines.
This never works. The offending employee never thinks the memo is about them and the rest of your staff looks at you and thinks, “Why don’t you talk to so-and-so about this?” You not only fail to get the one employee to act the way you want, but you remind the whole staff that you aren’t doing your job as a manager.
If you have an employee who has an issue, talk with that employee. Don’t send a blanket message to everyone and hope you get your point across.
Sending Emails When Angry
When an email comes across your desk that annoys you, it’s tempting to fire back a heated response. Never do this. If you are feeling irked, it’s a sure sign that you need to sleep on it and then talk to the sender voice-to-voice. You can’t hear tone in emails, and email has a way of escalating conflict. Don’t let it.
Also, if you get an annoying email, no matter how tempting, never forward it to another co-worker. The odds are high you’ll hit ‘respond’ instead of ‘forward’ and you’ll accidentally send your snarky comments to the wrong person. This is especially true if you use words like “dumb-ass”. Murphy’s Law dictates that if you ever use a word like “dumb-ass”, you will inevitably send the email to the wrong person, thereby making yourself look like the “dumb-ass”.
Assuming People Will be Unreasonable
I can’t tell you how many times in my career when I’ve been in a problem-solving brainstorm session and the group gets waylaid by this statement “Oh, _____ will never go for that.” You can insert marketing, HR, accounting, internal audit, IT or management into that blank space.
Don’t ever let your team talk this way. First off, it’s a waste of time. You don’t know what other departments will or will not do, so complaining doesn’t move anything forward. Secondly, it’s not your job as a boss to sit around and grumble about how other areas don’t cooperate. It’s your job to use your influence to help people work together to solve problems. You are more likely to get people to help you if you stop talking about how unreasonable they might be.
Firing on a Friday
Firing someone is one of the most difficult things you will ever do as a manager. It’s tempting to do it on a Friday afternoon. That way, you get it done and then everyone leaves and you can go have a drink.
A few reasons why you should do your firing on a Monday morning.
- On Friday it’s more likely that your freshly ex-employee will rally the troops to go have drinks at the local pub. Lots of ill-will is spread at these events. Do your firing on a Monday when most people have to go to school, soccer practice, church, or to their families after work.
- On Friday, your uncertain employees will go home and worry. They’ll worry that they are next. They’ll worry that it was because of something they did. They’ll worry about having a new boss / co-worker. Better to have them worrying on a Monday morning when they can come talk to you and you can help ease the transition.
- Knowing that you will be dismissing someone is emotionally consuming. If you wait until the end of the week, you will be less productive all week and in most cases, you’ll have a lot of work on your plate once the separation is made. Best to get it done early so you can jump into the process of re-building your team.
Reading Emails While Talking with Someone
Few things make you feel more insignificant that hearing someone type while they are talking to you on the phone or watching them look at their Blackberry while you are having a face-to-face conversation.
When you make someone feel insignificant, you are being a jerk. Nobody likes to work for a jerk. Making people feel important will win you friends and influence. The easiest way to make people feel important is to give them your undivided attention. It’s hard to do, but turn your computer screen off when someone stops by or calls and resist the urge to look at your Smartphone in the middle of a conversation.
Shari Storm is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Verity Federal Credit Union and is the author of the book “Motherhood is the New MBA”, available here.
By Michael J. McCulley, Esq.
New Jersey Courts are considering drastic changes to Court Rules for debt buyers. The changes would require debt buyers to produce an “unbroken chain of ownership” for each debt and even list the store or vendor associated with the card on the complaint. On October 20, 2011 a memo was issued to the Judicial Council of the New Jersey Courts by a special subcommittee charged specifically with the study of what proofs are adequate to support the entry of judgment by default in collection cases. The subcommittee was formed by the Special Civil Part Practice Committee in response to a request by the Judicial Counsel for proposed rule changes. During the course of the summer, the subcommittee met and deliberated on current practices in the debt collection industry nationally, and examined the practice in states surrounding New Jersey. The subcommittee found that Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, and Massachusetts have taken steps to require some degree of proof regarding the ownership of claims acquired by assignment. Ultimately the committee decided to adopt Delaware’s model with some modifications. The subcommittee’s proposed changes drastically increase the requirements in Special Civil Part actions on consumer loans and credit card debt, for both captions and pleadings, as well as in the submission of proofs in motions for default judgment. If enacted, the rule amendments will significantly impact debt buyers and the collection industry in New Jersey.
Proposed Changes to Pleading Rules: The subcommittee recommends changing Rule 6:3-2 to add a paragraph (b) which would require “The caption in any action to collect a consumer loan or credit card debt shall name both the original creditor and the current assignee. The caption shall also include the name of the vendor, if any, that appears on the credit card.” The committee reasoned that many collection actions involve credit cards that are issued by banks through specific vendors (i.e. a specific department store, electronics store, etc.) and therefore debtors think of these cards as “my XYZ Electronics card.” As such, the committee recommended that if the vendor’s (i.e. store’s) name appears on the card, the rule should require it be included on the caption. Additionally the committee would add a paragraph (c) which would state “The complaint in actions to collect consumer loans or credit card debt shall set forth with specificity the name of the original creditor, the last four digits of the original account number of the debt, the current owner of the debt and the full chain of the assignment of the debt, if the action is not filed by the original creditor.” This is a significant change and a stringent increase in pleading requirements, as the current rules only require that the name of the original creditor be set forth in the affidavit of proof, which is filed when the defendant is defaulted.
Proposed Changes to Proofs for Entry of Default Judgment: The subcommittee recommends changing Rule 6:6-3 by adding a paragraph stating “In any action to collect a consumer loan or credit card debt a copy of the assignment or other documentary evidence establishing that the plaintiff/creditor is the owner of the debt shall be attached to the affidavit of proof. If the debt has been assigned more than once, then each assignment or other writing evidencing transfer of ownership must be attached to establish an unbroken chain of ownership. Each assignment or other writing evidencing transfer of ownership of the debt must clearly show the debtor’s name associated with the account.” This proposed change was recommended only by a narrow margin of 10 to 8 votes in the subcommittee and 11 to 7 in the main committee, with the opponents raising the obvious logistical concerns of compliance with such a stringent requirement. The resulting compromise was a recommendation that the change requiring the debtor’s name to be required in each of the assignments should not take effect until September 1, 2013.
The New Jersey Creditors Bar Association is planning to write a minority report opposing these measures, however the Supreme Court generally follows the recommendation of its committees, and therefore it’s very likely these changes will be enacted shortly, in whole or part. Our firm will continue to monitor the recommendations and will update you with any changes. For further information, please contact attorney Michael J. McCulley, who is an associate based in the Philadelphia office of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., LPA. He can be reached at (215) 599-1502, or email at mmcculley@weltman.com.
