The Future of Credit Unions: AI, Innovation & Member Strategy

Okay. Hello out there and hello from GAC. This is Sam Kilmer, managing director at Cornerstone Advisors and host of the Fintech Hustle podcast, where we have unscripted chats in the halls of major industry events with industry leaders.

I am joined by a rock-star cast of characters today here across the street, almost in the hall of GAC, kind of a little bit off campus at the off-campus kegger party here on the second floor of the Courtyard Marriott.

I’m hoping there won’t be any hotel security that shuts us down or anything, but we’re going to see how that plays out.

Let me introduce the rock stars that we have for you today.

For starters, I am joined by co-host with the most, Brandy Gregory, right here, who is our expert in all things credit union.

So welcome, Brandy.

Never short on opinions.

Welcome.

I’m happy to be here.

Never short on opinions, Brandy.

We’re going to be seeing some of that, I’m pretty sure.

On Brandy’s left, we’ve got Ned Tobey, who is the CEO of Circuit.

I think I got the name right.

CU, credit union, is in the middle, right?

They’re in the middle of everything we do.

Credit union is in the middle of everything we do.

So Circuit, which is the branding artist formerly known as Members Development Company.

Got it right.

Sweet.

Okay, so I’m good.

I’m one for one.

Let’s keep me honest here.

Next, I have JB Orecchia, who is the CEO of SavvyMoney.

Excellent.

Okay, it’s all downhill from here.

Welcome, JB.

Great to be here.

And we have Nicole Haverly, who is the vice president of credit unions at nCino.

So welcome, Nicole.

Thank you.

I’m so excited to be here.

Sweet.

And last, but certainly not least, we’ve got Rob Landis, who is the CEO of Corelation, a core processing provider.

You may have heard of them.

Welcome.

Thanks so much.

Happy to be here.

Well, listen, it’s great to be in the halls of GAC.

One of the first things I always like to ask folks is, tell us about the day in the life of what it’s like to be you guys.

I know you’re probably on your 15th back-to-back meeting that you’ve had here at GAC.

I guess I’ll just go ahead and start with you, Ned.

Tell us about a day in the life of Ned over at Circuit.

A day in the life, waking up trying to help our owners, because we’re a CUSO, compete and win in the market.

I think that’s not just about banks and credit unions.

It’s about the neobanks and the other competitors that are out there.

So thinking about how we can help them innovate quickly and really hit the market.

Speed is of the essence, as I’m sure everyone else is going to be saying as well.

Anything we can do from a project perspective or a collaboration perspective, we’re looking to do that.

So that’s what I wake up thinking about every day.

What about you, JB?

Well, it depends on the day, right?

Conference day, do a lot of travel.

I think we do 36 conferences a year.

I probably do 20 of them.

But in the office on a regular basis, the days are pretty packed.

We just surpassed 1,600 institutions, 1,100 of which are credit unions.

We’ve got a partner advisory board.

We get a lot of feedback, but I think most of the days are either meeting with the product team and getting feedback from partners.

So back-to-back calls, really just navigating how we’re going to improve our product, add features, all based on the feedback from our partners.

Like integrating within nCino, which Nicole and I were just talking about.

Yeah.

We have 73 integrations, right?

So we’re in 43 digital platforms.

There’s a lot we’re managing.

Forty-three digital platforms.

Yeah.

And we’re in four LOSs.

Awesome.

How about you?

Yeah, a lot of similarities.

Conferences are crazy busy.

I came from the credit union movement.

So I was there for a decade at two other credit unions.

Now being on the other side, I’ve been at nCino for seven years.

I’d say a lot of my day-to-day is asking credit unions, what problem are you trying to solve today?

Whether it’s meeting your small-business members where they need to be met.

I always say, how are you making sure your members at 2 a.m. on a Saturday are getting everything they can from your credit union?

If they tell me it’s a manual process and tell them to come into the branch, we have a problem.

I think it’s just back-to-back those types of meetings.

We have 1,100 credit unions as customers as well, from the smallest to the largest.

Just making sure that I’m advocating fiercely for product and go-to-market, that every one of their needs is being met in some capacity.

It’s a dream job.

I love just showing up every day for credit unions.

You get the best ideas from your partners, right?

Yeah.

You aggregate those ideas and you go back out to the rest of them.

Sometimes you’ll get a harebrained idea.

But usually it’s a great idea, and so we validate it.

We validate it.

We collect all those ideas and then we go out, start with our partner advisory board, then go to a larger survey.

It’s interesting.

We do our partner advisory board and the feedback we got from the year before, they’re like, “SavvyMoney, you already built what we told you to do last year.”

So acting on that quickly has been fun.

So what’s a day in the life of Rob Landis look like?

Let’s see.

I’ve found a lot of great success starting with the wedges.

Then you get into the irons before you bring out the driver.

That really, you know, it emulates the game.

Short game’s everything.

No, in all seriousness, I’m really blessed.

I have a wonderful team.

My job is to stay in close touch with the folks that are doing the real hard work.

Then, much like what you described, validate what I’ve heard from them by the folks that we’re serving.

So a lot of calls, a lot of emails every single day.

But to your point, the ad hoc conversations, just the quick meet-and-greets and check-ins, calling when no one needs something from you and you don’t need anything from them, and just, how are things on a random Tuesday?

That’s when some of the best things come out of it.

And scratch my assistant dog, who sleeps right behind me as I make all those phone calls and emails.

That’s about it.

That’s great.

I mean, having a dog with you at all times, I think ever since the pandemic, it’s been like the new humanity.

It’s like, no, you don’t.

You’re just like, “Hey, this is my dog. I hope you’re okay with it.”

Don’t have an animal.

Yes.

Right.

So speaking of which, you are a co-host today, but this is the first time you’ve been on.

I want to hear a little bit about what’s the day in the life of Brandy Gregory, credit union guru, out and about town at GAC?

What’s a day in your life looking like?

I don’t know.

I’ve been in this industry, gosh, over 25 years.

This is a conference that can kind of go any which way, right?

How many times have you guys heard, what do you do with AI?

Is anyone sick of the two letters?

That is kind of where I think we’re at right now.

Everyone wants a quick answer, and there’s not a quick answer.

They want to be able to check the box that they’ve tackled AI, and I just don’t think it’s a check-the-box kind of thing.

So that is a lot of what we’re doing.

And just trying to be a connector, right?

I think one of the biggest things that we do for our clients is connection.

“Brandy, I’ve got this problem and this problem.”

And I’m like, “Oh my God, I just talked to so-and-so who has such-and-such.”

They need those.

They thrive off those connections.

That is what my role is every day now, working with credit unions.

I love it.

So GAC kicked off yesterday.

We’re not really that far into the event, but I’m kind of curious, even though it’s not that far through the event yet, what are you guys hearing in the hallway or in the exhibit hall or in the sessions?

Other than AI, or it could be AI, what are you hearing?

What do I keep hearing over and over?

We have to get out of our own way because we have continued to do the same thing over and over, definition of insanity, expecting different results.

I keep having credit unions coming up saying, “We can’t keep doing the same thing we have been doing.”

So let’s talk about and actually have a deep, in-depth conversation about what that could look like.

Then I am going to steal, we had the privilege, for some of us, of seeing Brené Brown this morning.

She was the keynote speaker.

Did everyone see her?

No?

Wow.

Okay.

Then I’m going to speak on behalf of her right now.

She had talked about, for the credit union movement, it’s mission-critical to have mission clarity.

Meaning that when we are showing up, it has to be 100%.

It can’t be that 75% of our staff are excited to be here for our members.

It literally has to be 100%.

It has to be operational effectiveness, fiscal soundness, all of that.

It was a challenge.

I think that’s where credit unions are today too.

They’re saying we can’t just get by, or that manual process that we’ve had since 1986, we do have to reimagine it.

We’ve said this a lot, but I think this is the year.

The AI buzz is kind of out there as well, and they’re saying we just have to do better for ourselves and for our members.

So I’ve heard that a lot.

We’re only a day and a half in.

By the way, 1986, class of ’86.

Good year.

Okay.

This is not a test, but I may have you all beat.

Anyway, what are the rest of you guys hearing?

Anything?

Yeah.

First of all, his name is Woody, and he’s a Goldendoodle.

Did you hear it down there?

Good dog.

Okay.

Sorry, JB.

I think one of the things I’m hearing, it’s very tactical, is just the speed of innovation driven by AI.

So vibe coding, for instance, Replit, things like that.

What we’re able to do in days that used to take years is going to dynamically change everything that we’re doing, especially on the front end of a lot of systems.

How do we take advantage of that and then also sift through the noise?

A lot of things are going to emerge very quickly, and a lot of it’s going to be junk, but a lot of it’s going to be amazing.

That’s a theme I keep hearing, and it’s something that we are trying to take advantage of as well.

We’ve even done some small cases.

The map that you were just telling me you didn’t like on our website was actually created on Replit in 30 minutes at a Starbucks, and we put it out there.

So I will add your next piece.

But my point is there’s a lot of opportunity here that I don’t think we were thinking about just a few months ago.

So it’s time to really embrace it and figure out how we as an industry can leverage that.

Just to add on to that, I’m hearing a lot of the same things.

I know we’re thinking a lot of the same things, that at this point, it’s not just an AI journey.

It’s an efficiency journey that I think credit unions and credit union providers have been on for some time.

But it’s about, at this point, having the structure in place so then the noise can be sifted out and the real genuine use cases that can just light a whole organization or even a whole industry on fire.

That’s where we’re right at that point.

I think some of the AI detritus has started to be shed.

I think some of the pie-in-the-sky stuff that was never really going to come to fruition is starting to get left off by the wayside.

But now having the real business use cases for credit unions to take care of their members on a Saturday at 2 in the morning, those are starting to come to the front.

This is the most exciting time.

AI is a means to an end, right?

It still has to start with the problems that credit unions have.

We’re leaning a lot into data.

We’ve got a pretty advanced analytics platform, but how do you suss out that information?

How do you make it useful so they don’t have to hunt for it?

I’m hearing a lot about primacy.

They want to drive their members to have more relationships with them.

Then the last one is reducing friction throughout the entire process.

Why am I losing business to SoFi and to fintech?

Because they make it easy.

Those manual processes, people are like, “I want a loan today.”

So I apply, I get approved, and then I get stuck in your backend.

How do you pull that business through?

So all along the way at SavvyMoney, people know us as a credit score solution, but we drive loans, deposits, analytics.

We’re constantly trying to reduce friction on that consumer experience in order to get people through and reduce back-office expenses as well.

Can I chime in?

Sorry, I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this as well.

My dog is Elvis.

Hey, you can do anything.

For my blue suede shoes.

And Nila, my Cavapoo.

Just got her.

So Walter started it all.

Am I big brown?

I have King Louie, who’s a King Charles Cavalier, and we have King Arthur, who is a two-week-old Golden Retriever who hasn’t joined the farm yet, but will be incoming soon.

So I guess I was sick of not having any shedding.

Let’s just add the most shedding dog ever to the household.

You said something interesting on primacy, right?

That’s one I struggle with a little bit because I feel like the old-school mentality is, I need it all.

I need the entire relationship with you.

And when they feel like they can’t get it all, they kind of quit a little.

So how do we get folks to realize that you may only get a part, and that part could be really profitable, and you better do that part darn good or you will lose the whole pie?

Are you really competing with Robinhood?

Or is that an area, stay in their lane, man.

That is where they can have that lane, but I’m going to be super good at this.

What do you guys think?

Yeah.

I mean, I think primacy isn’t necessarily everything.

But if you go to the opposite end of the spectrum and you’re an indirect auto shop and that’s all they do is their auto loan, and it’s costing you more to support them in digital banking, you need two or three products in order to make it worth it.

It’s an opportunity to build a relationship.

When you’re just doing automatic payment to your credit union, you don’t even know who they are.

You’re missing out on what the value is.

So primacy doesn’t have to be everything, but it has to be more than just one product.

I’ll chat a little bit too and challenge a little bit.

From the credit union movement, we want to make sure that we see the entire financial situation of our members.

So when I call into my credit union, I do it a lot because they have a lot of automated efficiencies.

But when I do, and they just take my transaction in front of me, I pause and I say, “You should have all the data in front of you. You’ve been my PFI for 30 years now. You should know.”

So I challenge them and I say, I do need you to look at my entire financial situation.

Summit Credit Union in Madison, Wisconsin, is still there after 30 years.

But I do challenge them back and say, I want to make sure that you are looking at my entire situation.

That’s why I’m a member of your co-op.

So it’s the primacy thing.

We do need to see the entire financial picture as best as we can.

I want to meet you today on your biggest need, but also for me to really serve you best, I need to be able to see inside a little bit further.

Yeah.

One more thing, and I hate to use AI too many times, but one more thing we’re hearing is the opposite side, AI as a security risk.

So we ran a project, it’s one of the reasons people are coming to talk to us, but we ran a project over the last few months on AI security.

We focused on the call center, but what really emerged as a huge problem is synthetic employees, fake employees.

How do you identify those through the process?

So we had to bifurcate our entire project and focus on multiple areas that are impacting our credit unions.

Very interesting.

By the way, to kind of round this out, my five-year-old Weimaraner, although her pedigree, we just had the DNA test done and it turns out she might be a Mountain Cur.

Anyway, her pedigree’s in question right now.

It’s a scandal in our household.

Then we have a newbie.

His name is Benji, and he’s, let’s see, Australian Shepherd and Cane Corso, I think.

Anyway, he’s going to be very large.

That’s kind of wrapping that.

I kind of wanted to do a rebrand a little bit, like Circuit, but my wife is like, “No, he already knows his name.”

And my wife, you’re right, honey.

Okay.

So you’re all entrepreneurs.

I have to ask, whether it’s in the hall or whether it’s just something that you’re all kind of witnesses of the industry and entrepreneurs, what’s something you see in the industry right now that you think, man, whether you mentioned sort of like PFI, if I call in do they really know me?

Something that’s, let’s just call it broken, screaming for an entrepreneur to swoop in and maybe make it a little bit better.

Whether it’s in credit unions or banks, could be financial institutions or fintech.

What’s something that you see that could be a lot better, that could use an entrepreneur kicking the tires on it?

Not trying to put you on the spot, but hey, anybody want to take a shot?

I’ll go first.

I think there are still a lot of unsolved and unmet needs in financial wellness.

Specifically, we’ve got emerging threats to young folks like prediction markets that are seeing a lot of money leaving the credit unions for these different opportunities.

I think we’ve got an issue with the silver tsunami that’s coming with SMBs.

The boomers are going to retire, and there’s no way to pass those businesses on generation to generation.

We also do see a number of these businesses popping up right now, good fintechs, but focusing on the elderly and when they retire.

How do we pass on that generational wealth and keep it within our credit union institutions?

So I think there are a lot of areas within financial wellness that can continue to be focused on and solved because they’re being done, but there are still ways that I think we can get better in those areas.

You need to spend a little time on a SavvyMoney demo.

We’re doing a lot in financial wellness.

No, just kidding.

There’s always room to get better.

Then you need to do more time educating some of our...

I’ll show you the credit improvement stats and the engagement.

But anyway, no, you’re right.

We even want to get better.

I think to your point about static, we view a consumer situation, whether it be all their financial products or their current state around their credit, and we give recommendations.

But the important thing is actually to go back in time and understand why are they working on their finances?

What are their goals?

We do ask those questions in terms of what are your goals.

But how do you then help them course-correct and be able to use AI to have a conversation with that consumer and help them along the way get to where they want to go?

That’s where we’re going to be leaning in going forward.

I think we’ve done a pretty good job up to this point, but there’s always room for improvement for sure.

I’m going to also say the trust that we’ve had in this wall behind us keeping us up has been terrifying.

Everyone’s leaning on this, and I’m like...

Yeah.

It’s okay.

It’s okay.

I was just like, wow, we all are leaning on this.

No, I think onto that of the younger generations, it is keeping me up at night, keeping a human in the loop at a credit union.

We’re here to be face-to-face, to serve.

We’re now removing that in more of an omnichannel digital experience.

But how do they still get the education to make smart decisions so that they aren’t going to the competitors who are not going to treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve?

I don’t know what that looks like, but it does keep me up.

I have three little girls, and so it’s, how do I be that parent for them?

But then I’m like, you need to lean on your credit union that is very digital now for you, but make sure that they understand that financial education and wellness.

So yeah, it’s kind of what you said, but it keeps me up.

Yeah.

I mean, I will echo a lot of the same sentiment.

I don’t see anything as necessarily immediately broken or something that an entrepreneur needs to rush in to have some novel fix for.

But I am concerned about the technology and the solutions becoming the mission.

Again, I wasn’t in Brené Brown’s spiel, but hearing that it’s really focused on where is being mission-focused.

For credit unions, that’s the relationships that they build with their communities, with their individual members.

So I’d be really concerned about existing tools or, again, I’m going to raise those two letters again, but AI putting us further and further away from the people that we’re serving, from the mission.

I think what’s so interesting is generationally, we’re all kind of the same generation, right?

Relationship is super important to us.

Well, you said you’ve been with your credit union 30 years, so you’re not 20, right?

I can do that math really easy.

I think that’s what’s different, is that relationship is huge to all of us.

I have a 15-year-old who, when she places a to-go order at a restaurant, I have to go in and get it.

She’s like, “I don’t want to talk to people.”

I was like, well, you shouldn’t have to because now they have a shelf, so you don’t have to talk to people.

She’s like, “But if I can’t find the shelf, how do I find the shelf without asking someone?”

I’m like, we have a whole different problem happening here.

But this whole, they don’t want to interact, is how do you build a relationship without interaction?

Because we were raised on interaction.

We also didn’t have these devices ruining us, right?

That’s what I’m trying to solve for with some of these.

How do you get these tools to this next generation, thinking about it today even though knowing they have no money yet?

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

Don’t worry.

I have a daughter in college who went into the student union, and there was the credit union and the bank.

She chose her institution based on who was cutest and who spoke to her first.

So there are other data points out there.

I think she’s an outlier, but I just want to say the generation’s not lost.

The other one being, they talked to me.

They talked to me.

Yeah.

Interesting to that point, our highest engaged user is Gen Z.

They check their score and their goals and reset their goals, and they’re maniacal about getting over 750 or even 800.

But one thing I think that’s missed, and we’re hearing about a lot in financial services, is cash flow.

Gen Z was doing debit card.

They’re doing buy now, pay later.

They’re not establishing credit.

They’re getting to a point where, “Oh shoot, I want to buy a house.”

You could transact to a certain level, but actually educating them on, hey, one, you need to build your credit.

But two, the industry also needs to catch up from a cash-flow standpoint because you could have somebody that’s actually a great credit risk, but they haven’t established credit.

So you’re going to start to see cash flow come into play.

It’s always been in small business, but on the consumer side, I think, and your ability to give financial advice when you look at the discretionary spending going up or down.

So it can guide them as well as qualify them.

Okay.

So I went negative and asked about something that was broken.

Why don’t we close on a positive side?

What’s something that really jazzes you, whether it’s walking the hall or just being in this industry, something that really excites you about being in this business right now?

Well, my negative was that perhaps we’re losing touch with the relationships.

But what gives me such hope is the energy.

Even this, not to be too meta, but GAC is a great example.

There’s a desire to do better, to improve, to use technologies the right way.

There’s so much momentum and passion for what we’re doing.

That gives me great hope that we’ll be able to, yeah, I’m confident that whatever comes up next, we’re going to get through it.

Might not be ready for it, but we’ll get through it.

Yeah.

What else?

I would say that we are still seeking to learn in this industry.

I don’t see any credit unions out there or partners that say, “We’ve figured this out, we’ve mastered it and we have nothing else to learn.”

It’s collaboration like this.

It’s making sure that we continue to be here to think through difficult items that our credit unions might be facing.

So I’d say we’re still continuing to be learners rather than knowers.

That gets me really excited to continue to be in this movement.

Yeah.

For me, and this is I think my 13th GAC, credit unions.

I started my career in finance, a little different industry.

I was a branch manager for an HFC office.

That was my first job out of college, which is very credit union-like.

In fact, a lot of the HFC people, Mike Valentine, you know, they ended up going to credit unions.

But the genuine interest and concern for their consumers is authentic, and you don’t see that in any other industry.

I think that’s what brings me, it kind of warms my heart, honestly.

It’s not contrived.

It is real.

Now, sometimes they can’t get out of their own way from a technology company, and they need companies like us to help them get there.

But at their core, they want to do right by people and they want to make sure that their financial lives are okay.

They just need assistance in doing that, and they’re on the front lines making that happen.

So I love this space.

I think credit unions have tremendous energy and excitement around the future.

We’re seeing it in terms of incubators that are popping up, the amount of money pouring into the industry from a fintech perspective.

We’ve got Reseda Fund.

We’ve got TruStage Ventures, Curql, Black Dragon, more than I’ve ever seen before.

The interest is there.

I would also say the tech IQ is at the highest level that I’ve ever seen it.

The conversations are no longer educational.

They’re collaborative about the future.

So I think the credit union space is in a good place right now.

I would just close to say that what I love is, you used to have to have this big, drawn-out business case before you invested in anything or took a chance on anything, or I’ve got to make sure I have all the connectors in place.

Now you see, “Oh, I put in this thing with Quilo,” or, “I put in this thing with Chimney to get a mortgage rate or something on my app.”

People are taking chances faster than they ever have before, and if they don’t work, they just move on.

They haven’t lost millions and millions in time, the time suck.

They just get technology put in fast.

Their test-and-learn is way faster than I’ve ever seen it before.

There’s so much cool technology in here that was not here three years ago.

Right.

So this is awesome.

I mean, I’ve always loved the idea of just hitting the record button in the hallway when we’re having some of these chats, and that’s what we just did.

I know this is like the hayride that you’re all on right now.

It’s not your first one.

You’re talking about HFC.

We’ve known each other since, what, Q2, NCR, probably before that.

You mentioned Summit Credit Union way back when, right?

So you guys have been around, and it’s all great.

I’m glad that you had a chance to share with me.

So thank you, Brandy Gregory, my co-captain today.

Thank you, Ned Tobey, CEO of Circuit, formerly known as Members Development Company.

JB Orecchia, CEO of SavvyMoney.

Congratulations on your funding round too.

I think it was just a few months back.

Great job there.

Then Nicole Haverly, vice president of credit unions at nCino.

And Rob Landis, CEO of Corelation, core processing.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fintech Hustle, where we’re looking for unscripted industry chats in the hallway at industry-leading events.

We are here at GAC and we are happy to be there.

See you on the road.

Hey there.

If you really dig this episode of the always-unscripted Fintech Hustle podcast, hit the follow button on Apple, Google, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you jam your podcasts.

And hey, tell your fintech friends.

More shop-talk chats are coming in the hall with industry leaders.

Look to see you out there on the road.