TAMPA, Fla.—Western New York Federal Credit Union is the winner of Trellance’s brand-new Acceleration Technology Scholarship.
The credit union will accept the honor May 10 at Trellance’s annual conference, immersion18, along with the $10,000 prize
The scholarship was created to be used toward the design and implementation of a technology initiative that will make a big difference in a credit union’s operations now and in the future; and is a part of Trellance’s Exceptional Member Initiative (EMI) Awards.
The $50-million WNYFCU has big plans to invest the funds in an area that many CUs are focusing on today—membership growth, the credit union said.
“We administered three separate surveys to gather information from the Millennial target market, our members and our employees, and found that our members and Millennials were seeking more electronic services to avoid having to visit the branch,” says Marie Betti, CEO of WNYFCU.
Armed with this information, the CU started to formulate a plan to incorporate more technology to grow their membership base, particularly with Millennials, as well as increase the number of products and services per member and improve overall member experience.
“Our technology initiative incorporates two member-requested technologies – tokenization and remote deposit capture. We also identified two services that will provide a more innovative and interactive member experience, text concierge and voice banking,” added Betti.
Asked about the two innovative and interactive services, Betti noted that, “Text Concierge will allow members to communicate with us via text messaging rather than calling or e-mailing. It uses a dashboard portal that will notify branch representatives of the messages and will allow us to set up auto responses to common questions. And voice banking will add value to members, especially Millennials, as they’ll be able to use the smart speakers found in many homes today to perform transactions.”
WNYFCU plans to work with third-party providers to implement these services.
With a strong focus on marketing to younger demographics, the credit union also recently started implementing the “Mad City Money” financial literacy program in their neighboring high school. This is in addition to the financial literacy program they have had in their local elementary school for years, as well as ongoing social media campaigns.
“We are very excited that we are the recipient of this scholarship that will make it possible for us to bring these plans to fruition,” added Betti.
“With this scholarship, we wanted to invest in the future success of one of our credit unions, and we look forward to witnessing the opportunities for growth that it will bring for Western New York FCU,” said Jennifer Bryant, VP of marketing at Trellance.