Credit union leaders from California, Nevada, and Utah flew into Las Vegas this week to attend the Mid-Size Credit Union Fly-In for a unique one-day event, discussing collaboration opportunities, earnings margins, member habits, technology, and more.

The day’s session at the Las Vegas Innovation Center was moderated by California’s and Nevada’s Credit Unions President and CEO Jeremy Empol, Utah’s Credit Unions President and CEO Rusty Cannon, and Stephen Nelson, executive director of Fuel Solutions.

There aren’t many opportunities for mid-sized credit union CEOs to sit down with peers who understand their unique operating environment, which made this roundtable a valuable dialogue that didn’t take too many days away from the office.

Attendees discussed:

• What Do You Wish You Could Stop Doing?
• Liquidity and the Hunt for Deposits.
• The Indirect Lending Reckoning.
• Is PFI Still a Thing? Growth, Younger Members, and the Cost of Acquisition.
• AI: Where’s the Actual Return?
• Cores, Vendors, and the Build-vs-Buy Trap.
• Fraud and Cyber: What’s Actually Working.
• Fee Income Under Pressure.
• Fintechs: Competitor, Partner, or Both?
• Business and Commercial Services: Crawl, Walk, Run.
• Stablecoin and Payments.
• Legislative and Regulatory Challenges.
• Scale Through Collaboration: The Founding Tenet.
• Keeping Your People.

To compete with fintechs and big banks while keeping their independency, CEOs also discussed joint CUSOs (credit union service organizations), shared back-office functions, lending syndicates, and jointly built commercial platforms.

The day closed on the theme that built the credit union movement — strength through collaboration — as leaders left with specific tactics for the year ahead.