Transcript

Hi, I’m Brent Dixon, and welcome to our introductory video for the series, “Navigating 2025: Credit Union Leadership in a Changing Landscape.” There’s a lot of transformation underway—regulatory shakeups, economic swings, tax policy questions, and technology disruptions.

Sometimes it feels like the ground is shifting faster than we can keep track. But that’s exactly why we’re here: to help you make sense of these changes and plan ahead with confidence.

Over the course of six in-depth episodes, we’ll explore:

1. Regulatory Earthquake: How the Trump administration’s restructuring of oversight agencies—plus the effective shutdown of the CFPB—could redefine the rules we operate under.  
2. Deregulation vs. Stability: Why fewer regulations don’t automatically mean less risk, and how smart internal governance can keep us from repeating mistakes of the past.  
3. Economic Winds: A look at interest rates, inflation, lending markets, and how these forces shape our balance sheets and our members’ financial well-being.  
4. Tax Policy Pressures: The possibility that Congress could remove our credit union tax exemption, and what that might mean for our bottom lines, pricing, and future plans.  
5. Fintech, Crypto, and Competition: How emerging digital assets, Big Tech, and smaller fintechs are reshaping member expectations—and whether we should see them as partners, threats, or both.  
6. Scenario Planning & Strategic Takeaways: A practical framework for preparing your institution for the best, baseline, or worst-case scenarios, so you’re never caught off guard.
   

Each episode is about ten minutes long, packed with key insights to inform your board discussions, executive planning sessions, and strategic retreats. We designed the episodes to stand alone, so you can watch them in any order or revisit specific topics as needed.

To get the most from this series, we encourage you to do three things:

1. Watch as a Group: Bring together your leadership team, board members, and key staff to view each episode, pausing along the way to connect the concepts to your own credit union’s situation.  
2. Use the Discussion Questions: Every episode ends with three open-ended questions. These are springboards for deeper conversation—helping you examine, “What does this mean for our risk management, our products, our member relationships, or our advocacy work?”  
3. Take Action: Information is only as good as what you do with it. As you watch, jot down ideas, note which episodes spark the most questions, and consider immediate steps you can take to adapt.
   

By the time you finish, you’ll have an up-to-date grasp of the rapid shifts happening in 2025—plus tangible strategies to respond. Think of this as an investment in your credit union’s resilience. We’re facing big opportunities and big risks, and the decisions we make now will affect our members, our communities, and the entire industry for years to come.

So, let’s jump in. We’ll start with a closer look at how federal oversight is being rearranged under the new administration, and why that may fundamentally change the playing field for all of us.

Thank you for watching, and let’s dive into Episode 1 when you’re ready!