CU 2.0 Podcast Money Talks Episode 5 Kirk Kordeleski on the Five Generations of Credit Union Leaders, Their Compensation, and Surviving Recession

Today's credit union leadership - especially at the nation's best and biggest credit unions- is professional and deeply versed in financial services. But that wasn't always so in credit union land. This episode opens with Kirk Kordeleski - onetime CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union, one of the nation's biggest, and now an executive at OM Financial Group, which specializes in SERPs which are building block retirement plans for key credit union executives - giving us a history lesson on the five generations of credit union leadership. He starts way back when everybody was a volunteer and takes us to today where we now are moving into a sixth generation of post Baby Boomer leadership.  

Then we take up what has become a challenge in many credit unions' budgeting: payroll in general and executive salaries and total comp in particular.  What Kordeleski says boils down to this: in most cases nowadays you get what you pay for.

And today credit unions need exceptional leadership as we shift into an environment of inflation, possible recession, and where liquidity is a key but liquidity also often is hard to come by.

Remember, this is the onetime CEO of one of the nation's biggest - and most aggressive - credit unions and he is offering what amounts to free consulting insights.

Take notes, it's all good stuff.

You may not always agree with Kordeleski but you will learn from him.

Listen up.

Want to know more about SERPs - or other matters raised in this podcast? Email Kordeleski Kkordeleski@om-financial.com



This show is in a Money Talks series where credit union compensation is untangled.  This show will help some executives negotiate better pay packages and will also help some board members understand the ways in which 2022 credit union compensation is utterly different from 1992 comp plans, even 2012 plans because now competition for talent is so much fiercer.


Hear episode one in Money Talks here.  Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. Episode 4 is here.


Have suggestions for topics to explore in this show? Email me, Robert McGarvey - rjmcgarvey@gmail.com