Lose on your own terms : Bill Hills EX CIO of Navy Federal Credit Union

Welcome to the CU Next Podcast — conversations with the people shaping technology and strategy across the credit union movement.Bill Hills spent a decade as Executive Director and CIO of Navy Federal Credit Union — the largest credit union in the world — before retiring in 2019. Today he sits on the board of Lafayette Federal Credit Union and on the board of Constant AI, a fintech building agentic AI for credit union lending.That gives him a rare three-way view: the operator who had to scale technology under double-digit growth, the board member who has to stay out of management's lane, and the fintech insider who sees how vendors approach credit unions — and how often they get it wrong.In this episode, host Joe sits down with Bill to talk about the constant tension between internal efficiency and member experience, why "every conversation is a negotiation" is the most important thing a CIO can learn, why credit unions don't have the same freedom to fail that banks do, and why — despite all the noise — he doesn't think AI is as unprecedented as everyone says.Oh, and he's been flying gliders for 45 years, which started because a sailplane landed in a field next to Route 1 and his car followed it.CHAPTERS00:00 — Welcome to CU Next: introducing Bill Hills02:54 — Freedom's Wings: teaching people with disabilities to fly04:12 — The glider that landed on Route 105:46 — Flying low and slow as a sanity check06:41 — Two credit unions, two completely different problems08:56 — Member expectations you don't get to set09:51 — "We're focused on the member" — are you really?10:45 — The efficiency trap and its downstream cost12:30 — The CIO as arbitrator12:42 — Competing against budgets you'll never match13:13 — Why credit unions can't afford to fail like banks can14:06 — A word on the upcoming Jim Phillips episode14:18 — Service first, and growth follows15:34 — "Learn how to lose on your terms"16:31 — Every conversation is a negotiation17:56 — including the ones with your children18:25 — What surprised him about sitting on a board19:45 — Being a resource when asked20:32 — What fintechs get wrong about credit unions21:18 — Membership versus customers22:38 — Skip-a-pay: what a good agentic AI use case looks like23:23 — When monetization clouds a startup's judgment24:23 — Seventy-two years of computing history25:05 — "Why is this so different? It isn't."25:23 — What is different is the speed26:16 — This is now a game of partnerships28:09 — AI won't fix a foundation you never built28:39 — Closing thoughts