NEW YORK—For credit unions, evolving into “smarter” digital financial service providers requires adopting a range of strategic and technological advancements, a new report suggests.
David Durovy, senior vice president of transformation at i2c, told PYMNTS that many financial services firms, credit unions included, have historically relied on basic alerts, member prompts and generic digital coupons, some delivered via mobile apps or SMS text.
But that’s not enough, and members want their credit unions to know a lot more about them, and to have an engagement that boils down to a conversation. Credit union members don’t want to be talked to by their banks, said Durovy — they want to talk with their CUs, PYMNTS said.
Getting there is no easy feat and means doing a lot more than simply updating and refreshing banking apps, PYMNTS said.
“As he noted, ‘it’s easy to throw around the word digital,’ and ‘digital experiences, digital first, they are buzzwords we hear every day across the industry, across a variety of use cases, but specifically for the credit union audience.’ But these smaller financial institutions have challenges in the mix as they seek to modernize operations and their members’ banking experiences,” PYMNTS said.
Compared to national banks, said Durovy, credit unions face budgetary constraints, and their staffing resources are far outpaced by their larger brethren. In order to forge ahead with new product and service innovations, credit unions have outsourced or utilized third-party aggregators to deliver a number of services that are critical for their member base.
Those third parties can include a broad range of providers, spanning core platforms to card issuing services. But in some cases, those same providers might not have the capabilities on hand to serve a credit union’s specific product roadmap or the services its individual and corporate clients are demanding, PYMNTS noted.
“Most credit unions’ members want an enhanced mobile experience, where, as Durovy said, many digitally savvy individuals, especially younger generations, have never had to write a paper check,” PYMNTS explained.