About half of Americans think we are already in a recession. The macro data say otherwise. Both things can be true, and that tension is exactly where Bill Handel spends his time.
Bill Handel, research director at Raddon, a Fiserv consumer research firm, sat down with Sarah Snell Cooke of The Credit Union Connection at GAC 2026 for a conversation that is equal parts diagnosis and challenge. The economy, member demographics, brand identity, AI and the uncomfortable truth about why fewer than 5% of millennials and Gen Zers consider a credit union their primary financial institution. We covered a lot of ground.
Handel’s framing of the current economy as a tale of two cities sets the stage for everything else in the conversation. GDP numbers look solid on paper, but a significant chunk of the population is quietly drowning in the gap between wages and the cost of everything. Cars, insurance, groceries, health care. Disposable income is shrinking in real time, and delinquency rates on auto loans are now the highest since the 2008 financial crisis. These are the people credit unions were built to serve, and Handel makes no bones about the urgency of actually showing up for them before the moment passes.
The generational piece hits differently. Raddon’s research shows that eight out of ten millennials and Gen Zers bank primarily with Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo or a similar big bank. The share who call a credit union their primary institution is below 5%, trailing even online fintechs. Handel’s point is not that credit unions are failing on values, it is that the way they’re telling their story is not landing. The mission fits younger generations almost perfectly. The messaging does not, and that gap does not close on its own.
Then there is the brand conversation, and this is where it gets interesting. Handel argues that the industry has leaned too hard on rate as its defining value proposition for too long. Younger members do not lead with rate. They lead with experience, and the Apple Card comparison he walks through is one of those examples that is almost annoyingly clarifying. Credit unions cannot out-spend Chase on digital experience, but the advocacy angle? That one is genuinely ownable. Big banks can say it, but they cannot mean it the way a credit union can.
His parting thought on AI is worth sticking around for too. Used well, it could be one of the great equalizers for an industry that has historically been outgunned on technology spend. The key word being well.
NOTE: If transcription were this AI’s superpower, it would be a very disappointing superhero origin story.
Sarah Cooke
Welcome everyone. I am Sarah Snell Cooke your host here at The Credit Union Connection. I am joined by Bill Handel. Welcome.
Bill Handel
Thank you. Good to be here.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah. And he is with Raddon, a Fiserv company. Introduce yourself in the company. A little bit more, please.
Bill Handel
Well, Raddon, we’ve been around for a long time. Actually, we’ve been around since the 1980s we’ve always done a lot of consumer research, Economic Research, things like this. So we’re kind of the thought leadership arm of Fiserv. If we try to take a look strategically what’s happening in the industry and understand those trends and then help to guide our clients into the right directions. Yeah.
Sarah Cooke
So love to hear about those right directions, you wouldn’t be working. So we’re here in the Governmental Affairs Conference, obviously, right now it seems like a lot of stuff is coming out of Washington that could affect the economy. 10% caps on credit cards or, you know, tariffs on different things, cars, especially fucking credit unions, the affordability of housing, the affordability of cars. And so I want to talk a little bit about just affordability, if we could, as it pertains to credit unions.
Bill Handel
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that it’s a great topic. I think the issue is, if you think about the economy, we’re almost at that, you know, to paraphrase a very famous book, you know, Tale of Two Cities, it’s really a tale of two economies, to a certain extent, where you’ve got percentage of the population, which is doing quite well, the wealth effect. You look at the stock valuations, you know, the stock market’s doing really, really well. So if you’ve got assets, you’re in really good shape. You feel really comfortable with things. But then you have the other side of the economy, people who have who live more on wages, where they’ve seen wages eroded so dramatically by inflation over the course the last five or six years, and it slowed down dramatically. But it’s still here to a certain extent, with us. And so you have that group of the economy that’s really struggling. So it’s interesting in our research, you know, if you look at the first macroeconomic data, you see last year, second quarter strong, GDP. Third you know, almost 4% third quarter, 4% again. Fourth quarter was not as strong. But if you if you adjusted for the impact of the government shutdown was actually pretty strong again. So you feel pretty good about the economy. You say, Well, things seem to be humming along pretty good. But the reality is, is that there’s a large sector there, my population, that is struggling, and that’s affordability issue that’s out there. It’s, yeah, fact, just make on point in some of our most recent, we do a lot of consumer research. We ask questions about the economy, how people feel. About half the population actually says, right now, today, we’re in recession. Very interesting.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, no, I’m actually not surprised. These are exactly the people credit unions should be serving too. But yeah, how can, how should credit unions respond to that, like extending terms, that kind of stuff, to be able to make the cars more affordable. I mean, we’re talking about increasing insurance as well. On top of that, it’s going to be like a mortgage at some point, where you pay both together.
Bill Handel
I mean, there’s a lot of I mean, from our perspective, there’s a lot of failed policy decisions that have been made over the years that have really caused where we’re at. But you really have to go back to root causes with all this, you know, when you get to the point where I don’t know if I can afford to make this car payment, you know, right, right? Now we’re looking at the highest delinquency rates in automobiles since the great, you know, financial crisis of 2008 right? I mean, you think, in today’s economy, with this strong growth, why are we seeing such delinquency behavior when you wait to the to get to this point to try and solve the problem, you’ve waited too long. So I think you know, with which we really have to think about as a as a provider of financial services, is that, you know, how do I get ahead of that game with my membership? How do I help them to make the right types of financial decisions in their lives, not just respond to a crisis that emerges when they can no longer afford the car payment or they make the wrong decision about which car to buy? Right? Right? It doesn’t make sense for them, you know. So I think that’s really what this industry should be thinking about, is, how do they really work with their membership to help them make better financial decisions in life. Let’s go back to the whole issue of financial wellness, or financial health, or whatever you want to call it.
Sarah Cooke
Which is credit unions are centered around to a degree we need to, I think, get the word out there a bit more, and maybe do a little more on that front and use our partners to help with that. But, yeah, this is a lot of kitchen table economics, like, needs more expensive. The flat tire I need to repair is more expensive. You know, everything is been more expensive. And so these, these folks that are, you know, wage earners, as opposed to, like, a salary. Yeah, their hours are getting cut back. And these are, to me, it seems like these are the people that credits absolutely should be serving those of modest means, not only those modest means, but so how do we do that? How do you guide where we where do you guide credit unions, and when you’re thinking about that kind of thing?
Bill Handel
Well, I think, you know, here’s, here’s where we look at it. Is that, you know, if you’re a credit union, you have a mission, right? You should have and you should have a mission, but you have to understand what your mission actually is. I think it’s the most important thing and you’ve got to make the right types of decisions as an organization that allows you to thrive and your members to thrive at the same time. It’s kind of like a win situation. You know, a lot of times where we operate so much in a zero sum type of game, you know, we think that, you know, if we win, then the member loses, or if member wins, then we lose. And it doesn’t have to be that way, right? So we have to really start thinking about how we actually help to how we actually help the organize the we organize the credit union around the member and really think about the things that are differentiation. Now, here’s a here’s an interesting thing. You know that eight out of 10 Millennials or Gen z’s, this is from our research, again, will state that their primary financial institution is a big bank, Chase B of A wells or one of those, right? The percentage of that those young groups who say it’s a credit union is less than 5% now it’s, it’s, in fact, it’s lower than it is for the online banks, you know, the fintechs out there. So I think what we really have to think about is, if we’re going to be able to be successful in helping younger or help the population in general. What we have to do is we have to make sure we can succeed, and we have to start thinking about those younger generations and how we attract them, because otherwise, in 10 years, we don’t even there are no credit.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, exactly. There are no banks. They’re just a bunch of sofas and whatnot, right? And I mean, and the thing is, credit unions are built for like millennials and Gen Z’s who want support causes they want, you know, fair, low fees, low interest, you know, all these things, but then there’s a disconnect in getting that information to them.
Bill Handel
Yeah, right, exactly. I think the mission of the industry fits better with those generations, and yet they’re opting for otherwise, right? And I think that’s the thing that we as an industry have to really address, is, you know, how are we, what is it about our messaging about ourselves, which is not resonating? That’s the thing that’s really, really critical.
Sarah Cooke
And I think, you know, the one I’ll get on my soapbox for half a second here for the industry to build a brand, and I’m not talking about a marketing campaign. Talking about a brand like, I mean, I know the Got Milk cheesy thing. Well, it worked. But yeah, building a brand around financial wellness as an industry would just solve so many problems, their credit union problems, people’s problems, the and, you know, credit unions, average age now, what 53?
Unknown Speaker
It’s way up there. Yeah.
Sarah Cooke
Did you see any of that in the in the data as well? Like, as far as you were mentioning that only 4% 5% are, Gen z’s.
Bill Handel
So what are the thing to understand is the industry grew up. I mean, the real industry really came of age in the 1990s that’s really when it came of age. Think about all the major events that happened in 1990s that impacted this industry. They’re huge. And that was prime for baby boomers. That was the time when baby boomers were really moving on to that next significant point in their life, right? And so what we’ve really seen, and everything is very clear in the data, is that this is a industry that did extraordinarily well with baby boomers, did reasonably well with Gen Xers, fell off again with millennials that are farther, falling off further with Gen Z. It’s almost like we’re living so much in the past. We’re run by people of that generation, which makes a lot of sense. Obviously, you know people with the you know people with experience. I mean, I understand it, but we have to figure out this is going to sound funny, how to euthanize ourselves. But we do. We have to play with, just to clarify. We have to figure out how to get younger in our thinking, understand the value proposition for younger, understand the things that are driving the thinking of that generation. I don’t think we do that. Enough is the problem.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, for sure, I think so many credit union and just people in general, it’s a human fault to assume everybody thinks like you do? Yeah, sure, absolutely. And not every one of your members should be a 60 year old white guy. So how, when you’re talking when you’re talking with cranes, and you’re sharing your research with them, one in particular is stick. Out to you that might be a place where credit unions should start really thinking about, how do we handle this or that in the data as an as a as a credit union, but also as an industry.
Bill Handel
Go back, I’ll go back to the issue that you talked about with brand okay, and I’ll tackle from a slightly different issue we talked, I talk about, we talk about brand proposition or brand value, or the things that you stand for as an organization. I think this industry grew up again in a place where the defining thing about this industry was price. And when I say price, I mean things like interest rates, right, right? That’s really what defined us, and I think it still defines us too much. You know, our value proposition is around? Well, I’ve got a solid loan at 5.64 whatever the percentage, right? That’s my value proposition out there. Is my rate. You can’t beat my rates. I’m not saying they don’t matter, but they don’t matter quite as much as we might think, especially for younger demographics.
Sarah Cooke
The member experience is what matters. The experience matters.
Bill Handel
The Experience matters in a big way. And you know, it’ll give you a great associate. Do you have a, you have an apple card? I do. okay, so think about three things. Think about when, how, the process of opening Apple card, and how the how that was okay. Think about the process of using the apple cart, however, that is think about the process of paying that monthly bill and how that is all in one place. How, you know, what have we done to match that kind of experience? One simple illustration.
Sarah Cooke
And one of the things I love about the Apple card too, is they don’t have a number on there, right? You they’ll just change if there’s fraud, oh, we’ll just change your number. Wasn’t that hard. Actually, it’s, it’s simply brilliant.
Bill Handel
There’s so many things that they have done right, because they’ve just simply looked at things in a different way, right? And it’s the benefit of being from the outside, where you don’t subject to we’ve always done it this way. We have to bring that kind of thinking into play here. Think about the experience, but then also think about, you know, experience is tough one. I would say this industry, because when you’re talking about experience, you’re talking about competing with the amount of money that Chase or BofA or Wells can expend on that experience, which is pretty serious, right? I mean, it’s tough for us, so we have to think, how do we close the gap on that piece as much as we possibly can. But then how do we also find that differentiator? Because I guarantee you, Jason wells would try this, or Nb of a would try this notion of here we’re here as your advocates, and they do try it, but they really can’t set it. They can’t sit there like we can as an industry, and I think that’s what we have to recognize. So how do we close the gap on the experience side? How do we make that and here’s the other thing, I would argue that a lot of the gap that’s around experience is more perceptual than real, because you don’t hear B of a talk about interest rates or wells or chase, they talk about experience. And so they’ve created this, this notion of what they represent. And so, you know, one guy right, capital, one guy right? And so we have to start thinking about how we talk about ourselves differently, right, close that perceptual gap that exists around technology and around experience, and then think of the next thing that really can differentiate and really, really to truly can claim, know that that others could not claim, right? So I think that’s how we have to think about ourselves, as evolving as an industry.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah? So I think when covid hit, it was like the emperor was wearing no clothes, yeah? Because that’s when credit unions fell below the big banks in member satisfaction, and which is so sad.
Bill Handel
You know, it’s interesting thing. What happened at that point was covid drove the generation that you thought would never accept technology into technology, which was the baby boomers, you know, the of all the generations that saw the most significant shift in behavior around technology during covid, it was baby boomers, because they were so low and they had to get to a certain level, simply because there was no other option, right? You know, the younger generations were all you already using technology, so the change wasn’t as pronounced. So as soon, as soon as you see a baby boomer saying, oh geez, Chase, is pretty damn good. Yeah, darn good for the four letter word.
Sarah Cooke
It’s all good. We use four letter words here.
Bill Handel
So, you know, so I think, I think we really have to think about that for this industry, it’s like, we like what we are, we like what we stand for. But sometimes we’re like, you know, I don’t know what the great analogy is, but we’re singing in a closet, so to speak. You know, yes, the general population doesn’t really, truly understand if someone uses a credit union. I think they see the value, but the general population just doesn’t really.
Sarah Cooke
Yes and every time a credit union executive says, We’re the best kept secret, I want to smash them. You don’t want to be a secret your business. I mean, you’re not for profit, but you need to make a profit. And you know, if there’s no younger people eventually who are borrowing from you, you. Yeah, what happens then? So I always love my guests. The final thoughts, what would you like to leave credit unions with?
Bill Handel
Thought, Well, I think, I think you have to understand how, you know, the evolution of the business model, you know, you look at the economy today, and you think about, you know, what’s happening out here with interest rates and all these types of things. These types of things in the evolution of the business model, I think we’re I think the other thing to really think about strategically is your own people, not just your members, but your own staff, and they are the very other significant part of your organization that you really need to pay attention to. And I think you know when we talk about things like AI, because AI is now everywhere you go, you can’t avoid, you can’t avoid the discussion around AI. I think AI is potentially one of the greatest gains for this industry, but we need to use it in the right way, right and it can be, it could be something that could really be extraordinarily beneficial, because it can potentially level a lot of them of the playing field, absolutely. And so I think we use that in the right way, and we keep our employees in the spotlight for what we do. You know, we’re not, we’re not just simply discarding these people because we can replace them with AI. We don’t. We need to change that kind of right, right? I think there’s a great opportunity for us, we need more productivity, and we can gain productivity in a lot of different ways with the tools that are coming around.
Sarah Cooke
Yep, yep, great, great ending there. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it, Bill.
Bill Handel
Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.