Credit union strategy takes center stage as Mark Ritter welcomes industry veteran Jay Murray to Credit Union Conversations. From teller to CEO, Jay's path through corporate credit union leadership shaped decades of collaboration within the credit union sector. He reflects on the financial crisis, regulatory gaps, and how shared services helped small institutions survive and scale. Jay also unpacks the importance of succession planning and why the cooperative model remains vital. His long-tail insight: Credit union succession planning strategies are essential for institutions that want to outlast their current leadership.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

✅ How credit union strategy evolves over decades, and why leaders who embrace credit union collaboration and shared services consistently outperform those who go it alone.

✅ What the corporate financial crisis revealed about regulatory oversight and why understanding credit union history prepares today's leaders for tomorrow's risks.

✅ Why succession planning at both the CEO and board level is the difference between an institution that thrives beyond its founder and one that quietly disappears.

✅ How the cooperative model and financial literacy initiatives can position credit unions as indispensable community anchors in an increasingly corporate financial landscape.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Jay Murray's origin story: from forestry dreams to credit union leadership and becoming a teller at a family savings and loan

03:16 The early days of corporate credit union outreach, visiting 1,150 Pennsylvania credit unions

05:34 How Mid-Atlantic Corporate grew through mergers and rebranded as VIZO

08:55 The financial crisis: what regulatory oversight missed and what the NCUA ultimately did

15:33 Building credit union collaboration through myCUservices and RKGO BIG

19:57 Succession planning and forward-thinking board governance determine whether a credit union survives

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

💎 Adaptability defines survival. The credit unions and businesses that thrive are those committed to a credit union strategy built on constant movement, change, and a willingness to evolve before circumstances force them to do so.

💎 Collaboration is not optional. Credit union collaboration and shared services lower costs and expand capabilities, yet too few institutions pursue deep cooperation. The cooperative model only works when members of the movement genuinely commit to it.

💎 Plan beyond yourself. Meaningful succession planning at the CEO and board level ensures the institution outlasts any single leader. Community banking relationships and financial literacy efforts give credit unions a purpose that mergers and acquisitions cannot replace.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Jay Murray - LinkedIn

Business Broker/Intermediary with Murphy Business Sales of Greater Harrisburg, leveraging over 30 years of executive leadership experience to help entrepreneurs navigate critical business transitions. Specializing in business consulting and facilitating successful transactions, I bring practical experience having led multiple successful organizations through strategic transitions.

As both a business owner and intermediary, I provide strategic insight and tactical expertise for those looking to buy, sell, or grow their business. Currently serving as President of Julius Gray and Associates, LLC, Principal of Julius Gray Business Services, LLC, and Co-owner of Huntington Learning Center - Harrisburg East, where we help students overcome learning challenges through personalized tutoring and test prep services.

Previously served as CEO of Vizo Financial Corporate Credit Union and President/CEO of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Federal Credit Union, where I led organizations serving over 1,000+ credit unions nationwide. Extensive experience in operations management, nonprofit leadership, and sales, with proven expertise in driving organizational growth and optimizing business performance.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Mark Ritter - Website

Mark Ritter - LinkedIn

SEO KEYWORDS:

Credit Union Conversations, Mark Ritter, MBFS, Credit Unions, CUSO, Business Lending, Credit Union Strategy, Corporate Credit Union, Succession Planning, Credit Union Collaboration, Strategic Planning, Financial Literacy, Cooperative Model, Credit Union History, Shared Services, Community Banking, Credit Union Leadership, Financial Crisis

[00:00:31] And I was really lucky. I haven't talked to today's guest in a couple years, and I was able to talk to him and I said, "Hey, come on the show. Uh, you have a great story. You're a great part of our industry." And he's still in it today and is evolving over time. Even though, like me, he's one of the veterans of the group when it comes to the industry So joining me today is Jay [00:01:00] Murray.

[00:01:02] Jay Murray: I am good, Mark. How are you?

[00:01:23] Jay Murray: Okay. Thanks again for having me on. It's great. I listen to your podcast all the time, so I enjoy your show very much and honored to be on it. Quite simply, I thought I was gonna be in forestry and conservation and be a teacher, and my biology teachers in high school encouraged me to get a teaching degree in that.

[00:02:15] And I was in transition trying to become a financial planner, and in the midst of that, I met the neighbor of Ed Fox, who was corporate CEO of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Federal Credit Union. He said, "Maybe you wanna talk to my neighbor about credit unions," and I said, "Okay." So I called him up and said, "Mr. Fox, I'm not sure what you do.

[00:02:51] Mark Ritter: At time, you probably barely knew what a credit union was, yet alone a corporate credit union.

[00:03:16] Yeah, so I started at the corporate as the first kinda corporate account manager to go out and visit credit unions, and at that time, there was still about 1,150 credit unions in Pennsylvania.

[00:03:47] That must have been a crazy visits.

[00:04:08] I had MapQuest printed out, and I'm driving into Altoona, into a neighborhood, looking for the Altoona Gas Employees Federal Credit Union, and I'm in the middle of a neighborhood thinking, "This just has to be wrong. This can't be where this credit union is." And finally, I pulled over, I got out, there was a man cutting his grass, and I said, "Do you know where the Altoona Employees Federal Credit Union is, Gas Employees Federal Credit?"

[00:05:00] There was a credit union. He was open Wednesdays and Fridays or something. Yeah, he was only open two days a week.

[00:05:14] Jay Murray: They are not, and that was right when the ledger book was disappearing, but a lot of the treasurer managers who were running those credit unions just did not wanna go to a computer.

[00:05:34] Jay Murray: So one pre-merger, we had grown by merging what was then the Maryland's Corporate. We brought that one on board in the '90s, and that expanded us and also gave us some national field of membership because they did serve NAFQ at the time, the National Association of Federal Credit Unions.

[00:06:16] Additionally, we chose to make headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, so that's when we switched to VIZO, and that was after seven other name attempts To find one that actually worked. Because of everything we did in technology, payments, and investments, somewhere in the country, somebody had the other names we wanted nationally.

[00:06:44] Mark Ritter: There you go. Yeah. That's how you come up with a name today.

[00:06:47] Mark Ritter: It's almost like every adjective, verb, noun, whatever, has been taken and sucked up by some fintech as a name.

[00:07:03] Mark Ritter: So you, quote, "retired" from VIZO, but you didn't retire. I didn't. Um, well, how have you been still involved with credit unions? What have you been up to? What have you-- what's been your day like since you left VIZO?

[00:07:24] Uh, others used that word. I call it retiring from first half of life. But in 2018, my wife and I had bought the local Huntington Learning Center, which is a tutoring center for K through 12 and some adult tutoring. And again, I always wanted to be a teacher, but the big decision was it wasn't the only thing in life I had ever wanted to do, and I just was ready for a change.

[00:08:10] Waved goodbye on the screen. By Monday, I'm working at the learning center. But prior to that, too, I had set up Julius Gray & Associates, so I'd been doing some credit union consulting, and today I still do that work with Cross States Credit Union Association as well, doing strategic planning. And later on, the person who had sold us the Huntington Learning Center was a Murphy business sales owner, franchise owner.

[00:08:55] Mark Ritter: So I was talking to some people and I referenced [00:09:00] the corporate credit union crisis of the Great Recession, and I real- pe- people had no idea what I was talking about.

[00:09:31] And, and, and now we're in fully hindsight, and if people don't know what we're referencing, I highly encourage you to learn your credit union history and go back and read about it. But nearly 20 years later now, when everything is settled, the dust is cleared, you were knee-deep in the middle of it. You just weren't reading about it on the Credit Union Times.

[00:10:20] Jay Murray: I think the big thing with our federal regulators at times is you look back and you think, "Why didn't they stop some things ha- from happening before they happened?" We have regulations, and then sometimes you wonder, why weren't they enforced? We see some of the stories of credit union failures, and we ask, "Why didn't they catch that?"

[00:11:20] And I wish, looking back, more of that being clamped down to not cause the collapse that did happen.

[00:11:55] And the OIG reports about these failures were, [00:12:00] "Oh my goodness, we did this, and we did this." And everything was in plain sight. The NCUA and ex- auditors and examiners and everybody was in there for years. Let's not... It's great to clutch your pearls. They, they weren't doing these deals and transactions in some back office room off the books.

[00:12:39] Jay Murray: Yeah.

[00:13:04] And if you recall, Mark, that was the threat, like 100 basis point write-off for all credit unions holding this capital. This estate process and the way NCUA did manage it post as the crisis happened, that turned out very well.

[00:13:33] W- w- what's your common bonds and some common threads on people doing it right?

[00:14:01] Things move quickly. Those days of thinking, "Well, I still got two years, right, till this thing really comes at me." Now you might have two months. Th- uh, something else is changing, and we're on this constant conveyor belt. So I think the ones we see most successful from all the way at the top in the credit union side, I think at the board level and at the staff level, they've got great teams, good governance, and they're constantly moving, adapting, and changing with what's happening.

[00:14:45] Mark Ritter: I agree wholeheartedly. It has to be keeping an eye on today, where you're going, and not just simply looking at the past, but 'cause it, it needs to be there.

[00:15:22] Looking back, what do you see as definitely some of the winners that you've created, maybe on-- or just the collaborative efforts that, that you're most proud of?

[00:15:48] And I remember we, we funded that with $25,000 to get started, and, and then added maybe another 25,000. So we said, "For that $50,000 investment, this thing's done really [00:16:00] good, and we're very happy." And the funny thing was when we get into that, if you'll recall back in the home banking days and a lot of the dot com time, everybody wanted a home banking front end.

[00:16:35] Everyone laughed at, "What are you going in that part for? It's the software you have to have." And that's where there were so many competitors. You had to have enough money to be funding the development all the time. So I'm happy about that one, and it still goes on today. And the other one on, that amongst the credit unions is RKGO BIG.

[00:17:25] And what I meant by that is there'd be new technologies introduced and more shared services together. That ultimately formed into RKGO BIG, which is, was a group of six credit unions that went all onto the same core processor, had one collective MasterCard agreement, and then did shared one compliance officer all in the back office, and they also had several of their staff go into the CUSO as shared employees working for all six.

[00:18:02] Mark Ritter: And, and we work with several- Yeah ... of them here at- Yeah ... NDFS, and they're doing a great job and still prosperous today.

[00:18:10] I wish it was bigger I wish it had grown bigger, but-

[00:18:39] I can do this. I came from the bank. I came from large credit union. I just did this on ourself, on our own." Where I, I wish we would shift back to a little bit sitting at the Hershey Lodge for a convention where it was, let's try to work together, and one plus [00:19:00] one equals four by us working together for the mutual benefit.

[00:19:12] Jay Murray: I don't know if you find this, Mark, but I feel like everyone has their definition of cooperation or what that means, and it's in the eye of the beholder. Some people feel like I'm paying dues to the trade association or whatever.

[00:19:49] So I think we n- I think we need greater collaboration, more mass collaboration, and greater cooperation.

[00:20:21] I can't... You know, let's just sell out." What, what are some of the things that you see that works best where people can plan today to keep their institution going for the future a- after they're gone?

[00:20:44] I think as a CEO, you're there for your moment to be in this position to lead, and hopefully you wanna leave it better than you came in, and also with a plan and a vision and a strategy of how you're gonna go on, and build a team [00:21:00] around that who can carry that on, and succession, everything. And that's also succession at the board level as well, not just...

[00:21:32] You have to find your niche and plan around that, because you can't be everything to everyone. But find out what problems you can solve in your community and within your membership base, and go solve them and be really good at it.

[00:22:03] I, and I think that's the success- a successful CEO thinks of the organization and then their legacy, so to say. And sometimes at some credit unions, tho- those two are very intertwined with a lot of institutional knowledge and the board, maybe the board isn't as strong. A- and you really just have to think for the future of the organization, because they're not making more credit unions.

[00:22:44] Jay Murray: Absolutely, and I think we see this, that people appear to be connected online but are so disconnected. And I can see it in young people that, that we're teaching at the learning center.

[00:23:25] I think it's just a new day, and it may come a little bit differently with technology, and credit unions need to find ways to build these relationships. But I think being in your community and getting out there and becoming part of it as an educator, advisor, and having the tools to help people become financially healthier and wealthier is doable.

[00:23:54] Mark Ritter: So what do you see as the outlook going on for the next few years? If you were advising credit [00:24:00] union, what do you think some of the opportunities that are overlooked?

[00:24:56] So I worry about that part. But yet on the other side, there's [00:25:00] a lot of good going on, and I just think somehow we've got to raise that storyline up at a greater way, and we need to attack at a national level of more people telling the story of what a credit union is, because I still believe most people interviewed or, ask or surveyed, they don't know why there's a real difference.

[00:25:44] Jay Murray: They can email me at Julius-- go to my site, juliusgray.com, and the email is juliusgray, G-R-A-Y, [email protected].