DALLAS— Credit unions are right to pursue fintech partnerships, but as RAI Partners co-founder Brian Scott argued, the real risk is mistaking innovation itself for a strategy.
Scott argued that too many credit unions are becoming mesmerized by “the shiny object” at the very moment they should be asking a more basic question: Is any of this actually helping them make more loans, gather more deposits and serve more members?
“Fintechs play a very important role,” Scott said. “Offering products and services that members want and need, and it prevents credit unions from having to go develop them themselves.”
But Scott quickly pivoted to the concern he said is growing harder to ignore.
“If you look at the market space, there was a Fintech Meetup this year and it was probably one of the most highly attended credit union events of the year,” he said. “There were so many credit unions there looking at literally thousands of fintechs, and it makes me say: Are we searching for solutions without a problem to solve? Have we lost our focus on the core belief we have of serving members instead of chasing the shiny new object?”
That question lands at a moment when fintechs are indeed moving more aggressively toward credit unions. PYMNTS reported that fintech partnerships with credit unions grew 19% year over year, even as fintechs reduced partnerships with national banks by 56%.
The broader market says fintechs now see credit unions as increasingly attractive partners. PYMNTS reported that 48% of fintechs offering end-user products through third parties now work with credit unions, up from 40% in 2024. And 56% of credit unions in November 2025 said partners helped them innovate “much faster and at much bigger scale” than they could on their own, up from 22% in March of that year.
Too Focused On Next Thing
But Scott’s warning is that speed and enthusiasm are not the same thing as mission.
“I think some credit unions are getting too focused on the next thing instead of their core business,” he said.
Scott said CUs were built to do a few things very well: make loans, bring in deposits and use those products to deepen relationships with members who may not be getting what they need elsewhere. He pointed to what he sees as underused lending capacity across the industry and argued that many institutions would be better served by retraining frontline teams to talk with members about real credit and deposit needs than by endlessly scanning the market for the next app, platform or embedded-finance tool.
“Credit unions on average have an 81% loan-to-share ratio, with larger credit unions driving most of that number” Scott said. “They look at that as good. I look at that as 20% of your capacity to lend is not being used. Let’s focus on that, not necessarily on ‘Can I create a new technology?’ or ‘Is there a new technology that will help you do it?’ A lot of times, it’s just about having the conversations with members.”
That is why Scott pointed to examples he said are closer to the real opportunity than another fintech demo. He cited Municipal Credit Union in New York, where the CU’s Tracy Helm at a recent Visa conference described a deliberate effort to rethink how staff interact with members.
“They’re training existing phone center and member service representatives in their branches to essentially be better at selling because they recognized an opportunity to serve more members and make more loans if the people interacting with members are focused on having those conversations,” Scott said. “They’ve shifted to that service culture.”
Hyper Focused On Conversations
He said Community Choice Credit Union in Iowa is doing much the same thing.
“They’re hyper-focused on having conversations, and not using technology to interact with their members. Talk time in their call center is way up and they view that as a good thing. More actual conversations result in making more loans and increasing their penetration of products their members use” he said.
Scott acknowledged the phrase can make some in the movement uncomfortable, but he argued credit unions should stop being afraid of it.
“It sounds bad to say ‘sales culture’ in a credit union, but that’s really what credit unions were designed to do — make loans and bring in deposits,” he said. “Sometimes you have to sell the benefit of the credit union to do the things that you were built to do. And I don’t think we should be scared about having a sales culture.”
The industry data make his critique harder to dismiss. NCUA said federally insured credit unions ended 2025 with $2.43 trillion in assets and $1.72 trillion in loans outstanding, while the systemwide loan-to-share ratio stood at 83.2%, down from 84.0% a year earlier. Membership still grew to 144.7 million, but the number of federally insured credit unions fell to 4,287 from 4,455, extending the long consolidation trend. In other words, credit unions are still growing in aggregate, but they are doing so in a market that is getting more competitive and less forgiving.
And members do not appear willing to wait around while institutions sort out their innovation stories. J.D. Power said overall credit union member satisfaction slipped to 725 in 2026, down four points from a year earlier, even though credit unions still outscored banks by 68 points. More than half of members now have checking accounts at other institutions, and 56% have savings elsewhere. J.D. Power said a “soft switching” trend is taking hold, with consumers opening second and third accounts and gradually shifting balances away.
Pay Attention To Drift
Scott said that is exactly the kind of drift he is talking about: credit unions can still be admired in principle while losing the daily battle for wallet share.
The competitive pressure is even clearer in lending. America’s Credit Unions, citing Federal Reserve small-business survey data, said credit unions’ share of small-business loan, line-of-credit and cash-advance applications slipped to 7% in 2025 from 9% a year earlier, while online fintech lenders’ share climbed to 29% from 17% in 2020.
Yet the same data showed 76% of credit union borrowers were satisfied with their lending experience, far above online lenders’ 35%. That gap gets to the heart of Scott’s argument: credit unions may still be winning on trust and quality, but fintechs are often winning on visibility, speed and ease of access.
Not Window Dressing
None of this means technology is just window dressing. In some cases, it is becoming table stakes. PYMNTS reported that 55% of consumers already use AI for financial planning or budgeting, 42% would be comfortable using AI to complete financial transactions, and 63% of credit union members would likely use AI education resources from their credit union. At the same time, only 8% of credit unions said AI is used across multiple facets of their organization, even though 42% reported implementing it in specific areas.
Brian Scott
Filene separately found 66% of credit unions plan to use AI for credit decisioning. The takeaway is not that credit unions should slow down on technology; it is that they need to be much more disciplined about where it goes and what business problem it solves, Scott explained.
That discipline matters because many partnerships still are not delivering cleanly. In PYMNTS’ January 2026 innovation-readiness report, 77% of credit unions said innovation projects took longer than expected, 93% cited partner limitations in technical, regulatory or flexibility areas, and only 16.8% said ROI objectives from their latest fintech collaboration had been fully achieved.
What Scott is really challenging is not the use of fintechs but the idea that fintechs can substitute for clarity and purpose. Scott emphasized that credit unions already possess a message many competitors would envy: people helping people, trust, service, community and a mission built around members rather than shareholders.
Scott said that remains one of the industry’s most underused assets.
“We were built to serve the underserved,” he said. “We want younger members and the credit union model — people helping people, trust, community — is a competitive advantage many competing institutions would love to have. The opportunity is to fully lean into it.”
RAI Partners works with credit unions to build and expand their credit card programs, including programs for members who fall below traditional underwriting thresholds. The credit union retains the member relationship, while the card relationship—the credit risk and card support—operate behind the scenes at RAI.