[00:00:00] Benjamin Maxim: Innovation's meant to, you know, fail fast, but I really like to determine, learn fast because you're supposed to learn quickly and then move on, you know, and if it worked out, you keep moving, and you take the next step.

[00:00:08] If you discover that you shouldn't go any further, well, you've captured that, and then maybe three years from now, the market opportunity is different, you know, right now, everyone's trying to get deposits. Well, six months from now, we all be trying to get mortgages or loans again, who knows what happens when interest rates shift?

[00:00:50] Josh DeTar: Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is Ben Maxim, who serves dual roles as Chief Digital Strategy and Innovation Officer at Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, and the CTO for the Reseda Group, a CUSO owned by MSUFCU.

[00:02:09] Josh DeTar: Now, I had the laugh when I was talking to Ben about his history and how he got into the credit union industry. He said, "Like many others, I took a job at MSUFCU from an ad in the paper for website design, figuring, ah, I'll do this for a year." And then looked for something else, and then he kind of never left.

[00:02:28] With a background in computer science and a not-so-fond love of C++, Ben wanted to use his skills in technology and innovation, but in a meaningful way. Ben feels the mission and personal value alignment at the credit union is so on brand for him, plus he had so many opportunities to grow and follow up on crazy ideas.

[00:02:51] Josh DeTar: He said he could have been like many of his classmates and gotten a job at Google or Facebook, but he wanted to be challenged more and given more opportunities to actually make an impact and bring about change. Ben's a husband and a father of two daughters. So, when he's not talking up a storm on a panel, in an ideation session, or on a podcast like this, he's running from dance practice to soccer practice and back.

[00:03:16] And he said, "While coming up with brilliant new innovations for the credit union may be a challenge, it can't be as hard as getting the perfect bun for his daughter's dance competition." So, Ben, I'm really excited to have you here as a guest today. Thanks for joining me.

[00:03:29] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Josh.

[00:03:31] Josh DeTar: Yeah, well, it's kind of funny, you know, this will date the recording of this podcast, but, um, it was really cool timing because just today, Cornerstone Advisors released their 2022 GonzoBanker Awards, and MSUFCU got a really nice shout out. So, April Clobes, the President and CEO of Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, won Banker of the Year Credit Union's Award.

[00:03:56] And one of the things I thought was really interesting was in the Award, they mentioned just all the different things that MSUFCU is doing and specifically around technology, and called out the Reseda Group, the innovation lab, and some of the different things that you're doing in the new digital platform, Nextly.

[00:04:14] So, Ben, I think what would be really useful for our listeners is if you could give us a little bit of an overview of the credit union, the CUSO, and just kind of the structure of how you guys approach doing innovation at the credit union would be really helpful.

[00:04:27] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of really started with that first job. So, my first boss at the credit union was April, she was in the role of VP e-commerce, she had just split off a kind of separate team, that really was maybe the start of our innovation path back then that was separate from marketing, separate from IT,

[00:04:42] that was really meant to just kind of ni, nimbly work and create a member-facing website that actually was used for service. And from there, you know, we worked together on a number of different initiatives when I was a developer, and she was in that role as VP e-commerce where we built our own iOS app, built our own online banking.

[00:05:00] And, you know, as we did all that stuff and we grew and, you know, I grew in my career, and she went on to become the CEO of the credit union, we kind of grew our dev team to be really large and our IT team and all, all this, and we, we built so much stuff that really became unmanageable at some point where innovation could no longer be

[00:05:18] just this kind of, like, organic thing that just happened, you know, we need to be more purposeful about it. We were doing a lot of, spending a lot of time doing this kind of maintain, run and maintain work, fixing bugs, making sure, you know, what worked for 100,000 members now work for 200,000, 300,000 members.

[00:05:33] Benjamin Maxim: And, and that did eat up all the time, and there was no one really focused on innovation, it was kind of, like, every executive's job to do something in their area, payments, lending, branches, whatever, like, but there's so much to do to run all those areas that, you know, innovation never really rose above the kind of the, the middle of the pack of project list.

[00:05:51] So, I was approached about three years ago by April to come work for her again and set up a formal innovation program. And the two of us kind of set out at the beginning of 2020 to do that, and we probably never would've imagined how quickly we would've grown and started some of the things we did.

[00:06:05] In 2020, we really focused on getting kind of this innovation mindset ingrained in the leadership of the credit union and also, you know, start to get some employees on board. We did some very meaningful pilots at the beginning of the pandemic that really helped with some of the issues we were having with employee staff time and not being able to hire and not knowing what was gonna happen,

[00:06:25] Benjamin Maxim: we kind of froze hiring and things like that, but our volumes on some of the channels, like call center and stuff were growing. So, we, we found some FinTech partners that would help us alleviate some of the volume there. And then, you know, we had some success in those pilots, we were able to get some things to market.

[00:06:41] We did a video banking solution that we got to market in less than five weeks, from sign contract to first member call as a pilot. So, we're like, "Hey, that kind of was our, our proving ground," and said, "Hey, experiment's gonna work." So, that got some people on, some more people on board. And then we started what we call The Lab MSUFCU,

[00:06:56] that was kind of really the start of what ended up growing into the Reseda Group, as we did more and more pilots with The Lab at MSUFCU, as it's formally called, or The Lab for short, internally. We launched that fall of 2020, we also met a company named Spave at an innovation virtual event, which is how I met a lot of my now friends that I now see at all these events we go to, was on LinkedIn and a lot of Zoom calls that we've all been doing for the past couple years, but really more in a networking sense like, "Hey, what are you doing?

[00:07:25] What are you doing? Where can we partner?" But went to this kind of FinTech incubation event and met Spave, and we were gonna do just a regular old pilot, but as we did more and more kind of conversation and thought how can we, you know, collaborate and co-create and partner, and ended up being kind of the catalyst it took for us to form what ended up being the Reseda Group. Uh, going into 2020, strategic planning with the board,

[00:07:47] they came up with this video, we wanted to create a CUSO, we've built a lot of technology at the credit union, Uh, wanted to figure out how to sell it to other credit unions 'cause a lot of credit unions have been asking us if they could, and we were always like, "Well, we don't know how to, to make that work."

[00:07:59] So, we were gonna try, COVID delayed that, but then when we met Spave, they were seeking investment, we said, "We'll figure it out." And we kind of pulled that idea off the shelf, and kind of the rest is history from there. Reseda Group was formed February, March, 2021, so we did Lab fall 2020, you know, Q1, Reseda Group 2021.

[00:08:20] And then, from there, we started to get some traction, you know, I do a lot of these podcasts, April does a lot of this speaking as well, and some of the, the rest of us, and as people learned about what we're doing, these ideas, you know, started to flow and come to us versus us having to seek them out.

[00:08:34] And it's, it's been an incredible experience, you know, Reseda Group isn't even two years old yet, and we've, we've ended up with, I think the official count is at about 1314 minority investments, and we have four companies that are CUSOs, credit union service organizations that we own and operate underneath the Reseda portfolio.

[00:08:52] Two of them are from our supply chain, one is a print-marketing company. So, if you need trinkets, trade show stuff, mailings, things like that, what you would think you'd order, that's one of the companies we offer as a CUSO. Then we also have a digital marketing agency, they do exactly what you would imagine, end-to-end marketing, in a digital sense, ad placements, video production, all that kind of good stuff.

[00:09:10] And then we have two FinTechs, one was that original idea of how do we sell stuff we created at the credit union. So, we took our financial education platform, brought it, transferred the IP to CUSO, and now that CUSO is called Ever Green 3C and is selling what they call the financial wellness center out to other credit unions, that may not have the time to create, you know, the 10 years worth of content that we've done at MSUFCU,

[00:09:31] Benjamin Maxim: they can just leverage it, and there'll be new content produced every week for them to leverage with their members, and then Spave was that one that was the catalyst, we ended up acquiring 80% ownership there, and as a result I get to, you know, be the CTO of the Reseda Group, and then also help build out the technology as a CTO for Spave and Ever Green as well, and really help figure out, you know, how do these things work together,

[00:09:51] and, and really what I've started to talk about as an innovation ecosystem. So, things can start in the lab, and then as they start to scale, they prove out, you know, we're their first credit union client, then they're ready to go tackle the whole credit union market while we give them the foundation and we give them investment, and then they grow. 

[00:10:07] Benjamin Maxim: Or they start the other way, there's a couple companies that we're about to bring onto the portfolio that are very new. Some that I, I, I've encountered through different accelerated programs that we've funded, or participated in, and, you know, giving them smaller investments, giving an opportunity to grow through the Lab and then come back, you know, if it's successful and give them, you know, larger investments as they go to scale as well.

[00:10:25] But really trying to go at both ends of the spectrum and, and, you know, people can flow through the Lab or flow through Reseda and then kind of grow and scale from there. So, really the, the whole kind of catalyst of all of it is, you know, our tagline at Reseda is "Building better for members," you know, kind of tying with our "Building dreams together" with our tagline at the credit union,

[00:10:45] and the Lab's tagline is "Accelerating innovation together," so really between all three of those entities, bringing solutions to the credit union industry that, you know, we have the, the resources and skill and talent to help, you know, really bring those to fruition so other credit unions can take advantage of.

[00:11:03] Benjamin Maxim: And along the way, really trying to help others, you know, if they're interested in doing what we're doing, teach them how to do what we're doing, so we can really have a stronger industry 'cause, you know, we talk about, often credit unions are very collaborative, a highly collaborative and we're really trying to support that angle 'cause it's not us versus each other, it's really us trying to, you know, serve our missions and, and really show the difference between what we do versus maybe what a bank does as well.

[00:11:26] Josh DeTar: So, I think if I distill all that down, what you're trying to say, Ben, is that you sleep every third Thursday of the month, right?

[00:11:33] Sometimes an occasional Tuesday, but yes. No, in, in all seriousness, I mean, you guys have so many different things going on, and I want to try and unpack each one of these. I wanna start with maybe a little bit of a loaded question for you, and this is an outsider's perspective in, this is something that I've always found really interesting, and this isn't necessarily unique to the credit union industry, but I, I feel like I see more of it in this industry than I see in other industries.

[00:11:59] Josh DeTar: And watching, you know, you as a large prominent credit union kind of deciding that you wanna start this lab and an innovation group and the Reseda group to be able to then, you know, package some of these products that you guys are building and bring it out to the market for other credit unions to consume.

[00:12:15] And my question to you is, an outsider in, I think I see that there's maybe two major reasons why that's happening, right? And, and I'll be fairly blunt with each of these, and then I'd, I'd like to get your perspective on it. So, I think the first is that some of the reasons why this happens and some of this innovation has to take place in credit unions is because their ecosystem and vendors have failed them.

[00:12:41] And sometimes there are things that you're looking for or need, and you're just not getting it from the market that's supposed to be serving you, or even a specific company, you know, we bought this product from them, and we really need it to evolve just slightly, or we need one new feature, and they just can't keep up with the pace of innovation, therefore we have to tackle it ourselves.

[00:13:01] So, I think that's one line of reasoning of why credit unions sometimes have to take on some of this innovation. But I think the other is you just want to, and there is a desire of, hey, we've got really smart people internally, they've got great ideas, and they have phenomenal skill sets, let's leverage those to do that. So, could you maybe talk to me a little bit about, from the insider's perspective, each of those two topics?

[00:13:26] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, absolutely. I'll probably blend the answer to number two into number one 'cause, because really, I mean, we do want to, if you think of how many credit unions formed, it was out of an innovative way to deliver financial services, you know, Michigan State Federal Credit Union was founded out of a desk drawer at, uh, Michigan State University during the Great Depression from professors and faculty that were trying to get each other access to loans,

[00:13:48] you know, that wasn't something that was happening with banks, you know, and innovation's kind of been at the forefront of what we've been trying to do as credit unions, you know, and really bringing it back to kind of that mission alignment, you know, where we all have missions and give back to our communities.

[00:14:02] But yeah, I, I think the reason that innovation is happening in particular with, you know, startups, you know, I think a lot of the larger vendors in the credit union space are now starting to label themselves FinTechs as well, right or wrong, but, you know, they are technically FinTechs, you know, people as large as Visa and Jack Henry and Fiserv are all FinTechs, they deliver financial technology. 

[00:14:21] Benjamin Maxim: But I think, you know, that word gets thrown around so much that really what we're talking about is we're looking for startups, people that are being nimble, you know, there are a lot of things that are kind of locked down by the, the top five national banks, super regionals that, you know, they hire, I don't know, I think they have, like, 20,000 developers, or, you know, I think Chase has 20,000 developers doing offshore work in India or something like that,

[00:14:42] like, that may not be the right number, but there's tens of thousands of developers, you know? At, at the peak of my development, you know, leadership, we had 40 people, and that was all positions, that was managers, project managers, QA, UX, all that, you know, so, and then our members are asking us to compete with Chase and Bank of America and Wells, 'cause that's what they know,

[00:15:00] or maybe in our area, you know, the regionals that they're talking about, our PNC in Huntington, and they're coming in bank to the university, 20 years ago they would come in and they would need a local check and everyone come and be like, "Oh, MSU Federal Credit Union, we will get my local checks from you,

[00:15:13] Benjamin Maxim: everyone accepts them in the area, when I'm paying my rent, easy peasy, we get all the new students every year." Now, we're down to about maybe 50% or less of the new student incoming group. So, really, you know, we've had to be, get creative in how we approach that, how do we attract those younger members, and get them to wanna stay with us.

[00:15:30] And I think, you know, we're lucky being connected to the university where we have a kind of average age of member that's about 37, 38, whereas many credit unions are in the, you know, 45-plus, 50-plus range. So, a lot of that is how do you attract this younger generation that doesn't even believe they need banking accounts?

[00:15:46] Benjamin Maxim: They're interacting with things on a daily basis, like, Venmo, Cash Out, PayPal, Square, what, whatever, they're thinking they can just leave their money in these accounts and transfer it back and forth as they, you know, share expenses, do whatever. And they don't even think there's a value in putting that money into any sort of banking account where there's such a credit union or a bank.

[00:16:04] So, you know, some of this innovation really is being forced because of the things they're interacting with as well. And for credit unions to compete, they're just not gonna win because they have 10,000 ATMs in the city of Chicago or New York where people are seeing it all the time, you know, they need, there needs to be a differentiator,

[00:16:18] and partnership is, you know, with FinTech, the startups, to be that differentiator. And yes, there was a failure by a lot of maybe the established vendors, or maybe not the foresight, or they weren't able to move as nimbly, you know, in our dev space, when we built all our stuff, we ended up in this situation where we weren't able to move nimbly.

[00:16:35] So, put that at a larger scale, we were serving all these credit unions, you know, the vendors couldn't keep up. And, and they're trying now, and they're, they're playing catch up. But really, where they should focus now is how do you enable that kind of partnership with these FinTechs and the credit unions so you can kind of bring it all into this, that ecosystem of banking.

[00:16:51] There's a lot of core providers, digital banking providers, that if they just enable the access to the data and get these FinTechs in there, you know, let them do the thing that they do really well. And then, you know, we focus on, you know, how do the, the credit unions leverage their data and leverage their existing relationships to improve upon it versus it being a true competitor and feeling the need to, like, rebuild every single thing that a FinTech has built.

[00:17:13] Josh DeTar: You know, Ben, it's funny, I think this topic has come up a few times in past podcasts where we talk about, you know, the contraction and expansion of how vendors are used, how services are offered, and again, this is not unique to our industry, but, you know, there are times where, you know, we'll just pick on credit union looks at a vendor 

[00:17:33] and says, "I want everything from this one vendor to simplify things, and if I get it all from this one vendor, then it'll obviously all work together very well." And then we get this, you know, expansion where they say, "No, now I need niche products from niche service providers, I need to expand my relationships." And then, ultimately, it gets really complicated, and they start to say, "Okay, how can I streamline these and get 'em, you know, more of these services from one single person?"

[00:17:58] And then it expands again, and I, I'd be curious to get your take on, I feel like we've kind of reached a point of no return where it's kind of expanded, and it's gonna stay expanded, like, there's just so much in this world of needing to be very personalized in the services that we offer and the way in which we deliver them that, you know, going after just niche products and features from specific companies is kind of our path forward.

[00:18:26] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, I would agree with that to some extent, I think there is room for some of the bigger established players to be platforms to enable this kind of expansion, you know, we, we at the credit union have a philosophy of, you know, we have a few core key vendors that if they don't work, you know, we can't deliver our services to our members at all.

[00:18:47] So, if credit cards don't work, debit cards don't work, the core banking system doesn't work, digital banking doesn't work, ATMs, ITMs, you know, things that allow people to access their money. If those things don't work, we have a bad day, our members are yelling at us, you know, but those are also things that we can't control.

[00:19:02] That's kind of the basic core foundation of our business, and there's a lot of these other ancillary things, though, that really enhance the experience, they add and expand, like you're saying, kind of the multiverse of credit unions and banking if you will. And being able to build...

[00:19:15] Josh DeTar: Did you just throw a Marvel reference in?

[00:19:17] Benjamin Maxim: I was trying.

[00:19:18] Josh DeTar: I'm proud. Sorry. Continue.

[00:19:21] But yeah, so, you know, as we're building out this kinda ecosystem multiverse of FinTechs where you can really, you know, plug and play, you know, if they start to get protective and not allow, you know, and this is really the kind of the core future I feel of banking, you know, is that open-banking concept,

[00:19:38] Benjamin Maxim: open finance where the data is portable, but you win because you've created the experience, you keep people in your sphere, and they're able to access everything you need from you, you know, then maybe they're not looking for services, but, you know, those services aren't all provided by you, they're not all provided by your core vendor or your digital banking provider, but the user, member, customer doesn't perceive that it's not from you,

[00:20:02] they don't care, they wanna just access the stuff, and the less places they have to go log in, the better. But I think there's some set out there that the average person has anywhere between, like, five to ten financial institution relationships, or with an app of some kind, so finished institution at FinTech.

[00:20:16] So, they may have, you know, Venmo and a credit card over here and a loan over here for their auto through a, like, Toyota Finance or whatever, you know, and then they have a credit union account 'cause they had a really good rate on something, and then they have this other mortgage with someone else, so they had a great rate. And they're going into all these different apps, you know, we're not all gonna be able to capture the whole experience, but the more you can give them and allow them to bring stuff,

[00:20:41] and, and some of what we did when we started the Lab was, you know, we heard a lot from our members that they were trying to access things like Coinbase and Robinhood and, you know, they were throwing out error messages as "Contact your financial solution, they don't support plaid in this way." Well, we took that to heart and said, "Okay, well, let's make sure we enable plaid."

[00:20:56] So, even if it's not stuff we are directly involved in, our members can still do what they want and link our accounts into these different things, and we don't have to be the, say, I'll be all of whatever they choose, but we're enabling them to do what they wanna do and create their own personalized experience.

[00:21:11] And really it's about building the building blocks to make it successful, you know, a lot of these players that are established and have been around for a while, if they figure out how to become platforms that enable this kind of modularization and, like, this kind of adding on and enhancing the experience will do very well.

[00:21:28] People, I think that try to shrink it and, you know, take it on themselves and, and the way they may become modular is to acquire some of these companies as well, if it's a key offering, rather than them trying to recreate it or build it themselves, you know, I think there's an opportunity to acquire some of these FinTechs along the way.

[00:21:45] And, and I think there's a lot of opportunity for new innovation collisions as that happens where, you know, maybe something comes out of, one of those acquisitions that would've never been possible without it, so.

[00:21:56] It's interesting you made the comment about the number of apps that people have on their phone, I just recorded a podcast the other day with Danny Payne from Jack Henry,

[00:22:04] Josh DeTar: and Danny made a similar comment about that, and he said, "You know, so many times I talked to credit union executives, and they don't think that they have competition in the other, you know, services that are providing financial services,"

[00:22:18] and he said, "I always challenge 'em to open up their phone and look at how many apps they have that are related to finance," and he's like, "Usually they'll say, 'Oh, I have two or three because I have, you know, two or three credit union relationships.'" And he's like, "No, no, no, but do you have this?" "Oh, I do." "Well, that's technically providing some financial services.

[00:22:36] How about this? How about that? What about your Starbucks app? You know that there's a pay portal through Starbucks app, like." So, it starts to add up. So, one of the things that we're gonna do, you'll have to keep an eye on this and jump in on it with us. When Danny's podcast releases, we're gonna do a LinkedIn poll and see how many people, or how many apps people have on their phone that are related to finance and, like, really get people digging in to see just how many they have.

[00:23:00] Benjamin Maxim: I would say, as we were talking here, I just, I have a folder called finance, and there's 23 apps in there, and if you're starting to add things, like, Starbucks, then you add quite a few more. So, yeah, we'll have to do a true count later when you put the poll out.

[00:23:11] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I think, on average, I wouldn't be surprised if it's double what you actually think it is when you just look at your, like, financial folder. Yeah, that's exact comment Danny and I made is, like, we both have folders on our phones called financial and, you know, I think it's probably a little skewed 'cause we work in this industry, and so 

[00:23:27] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly, yeah. 

[00:23:27] Josh DeTar: I've got a hundred bucks in, like, 50 different institutions just to spy on what Chase is doing and that kind of thing, but, so, does that count? Yeah. A little 

[00:23:35] Benjamin Maxim: skewed, 

[00:23:35] Josh DeTar: but anyway. So, here's what I find really interesting. So, we go back to the question that I asked you about, you know, I think that there are, a multitude of different reasons, but maybe two primary reasons why credit unions start to do, you know, internal innovation and internal development is, you know, one vendors have failed them, and two, they just want to evolve and innovate and leverage resources that they have.

[00:23:56] So, when you have that kind of mindset and then you have a credit union like MSUFCU that has decided to have, you know, internal teams dedicated to actually doing development and innovation, now you have this opportunity where when you look at, sorry, I'm combining a lot of things here, when you look at 

[00:24:12] that kind of contraction and expansion of where do you go to get services, and you kind of put all three of those things together, how do you guys decide, since we have a lot of options and paths we can go, how do you decide whether you build by your partner?

[00:24:27] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. So, yeah, so, the reason the department I joined the credit union 15 years ago was formed was out of the need to not be one idea out of the thousands that, you know, you need to get 600 clients to vote up and vote down, to actually get worked in the next, you know, 10, 15 months. So, we wanted to be able to respond to our member feedback,

[00:24:47] and really at the core of what we try to do, we try to do a balance of measuring what are our members' needs, but then sometimes they don't know what they need, you know, being from the Detroit area, grown up here, you know, there's a famous Henry Ford quote I like to bring out where "If you ask the people what they wanted, they would've said they wanted faster horses, not cars."

[00:25:03] So, you know, at some point, you do have to maybe present ideas or get new concepts in front of them, and they may be shot down, and maybe it's not the right timing. . So, we've experimented with things like voice banking, we did that maybe four or five years ago when Alexas were, like, the hottest Christmas gift going.

[00:25:20] And, you know, it wasn't interesting to our members at that time. Well, now we're looking at it more as maybe a call center technology versus it being, you know, an at-home, are you gonna bank this way? But it's the same kind of underlying chat bot technology, it's just in a different medium. Or, you know, the, the really addicts crux, we kind of measure on three major kind of categories with lots of different nuances below, but kind of feasibility, viability, desirability.

[00:25:44] Benjamin Maxim: So, does it work? Can we make it successful? You know, do our members want it? And there are a lot of things that, you know, can work and then fit into our tech stack, and our business units can support 'em, but then you go, and you ask the members if they want the thing, and they say, "Absolutely not. I'll never do that thing."

[00:25:59] You know, that, that, by asking up front and doing some of that research through the Lab, and through the Lab, we really try to pilot these technologies. So, we have ideas, and we ask members before we try out those ideas, you know, what's the, you know, we have usually like a top 10 list or next 10 list, kind of next step ideas.

[00:26:14] And we use our member feedback to kind of rank those, and when we put 'em out, you know, if something's not getting the reception from a small set of members, it's probably not gonna get it from the larger set. So, then we say, "Hey, we either need to change how we're approaching this or maybe this isn't the right idea to pursue at this time.

[00:26:28] Benjamin Maxim: Let's capture all the learning and put it on the shelf." But what really, what we're trying to do, more so now to that true build by customized question you asked, you know, is there a market advantage for us? Is there a reason for us to build it ourselves? And if that's no from the beginning, we should just buy it. Is there things like heavy compliance, like, with a mortgage platform or commercial lending or, you know, wealth management, some things like that? Probably doesn't make sense for us to figure out the laws in all 50 states and, you know, if someone's overseas and all that, let's let someone else handle that compliance, that part of it.

[00:27:05] We'll focus on, you know, the experience surrounding how a member would use and interact with that, but we don't need to spend our time or our energy doing that 'cause that some level that also, some other things are also commoditized as, as well. So, you, you need a mortgage? Okay, great. Or a mortgage application.

[00:27:19] How many mortgages do you get in your life? You know, back when we were refinancing every few months, you know, a couple years ago, maybe more often than not, but I imagine most people got their mortgage, they're gonna be in their house for a while, and they get another one maybe when it's time to refinance or they move, but that's not an everyday experience.

[00:27:34] So, there's not really a reason to build that yourselves, you know, there's enough quality out in the market, pick the best partner and plug that one in. Some of the things surrounding, like at digital banking, you know, we built our own 10, 12 years ago now because we couldn't get what we wanted in the market and we couldn't have the control.

[00:27:52] Well, there are players in the market now that have some level of what we wanted, so we wanted to go back to the market and figure it out, how we could maybe do the customized approach, so we get 80% of what we want from the base product, now let's customize. So, we, we did that, we set up to do that.

[00:28:06] And then, you know, you mentioned Nextly as part of the shout-out to April at the beginning. That is our new partnership with a company called CU NextGen, where we sold them our IP because we couldn't find enough customization out there in the market and control. So, now we're asking them to build what we want,

[00:28:23] but we're not the ones who are gonna maintain it in this relationship, and that, that's the good part. We can then customize all the things that are maybe a differentiator, unique to our membership base, or maybe the, you know, vendor is not quite ready to do it for everyone, well, we have the option with this new platform to do so.

[00:28:40] So, we kinda get the best of both worlds there, and really that's at the end, and then, you know, the build from scratch, there are just some things that, you know, they're not in the market, and we're, we're trying to invent them, we look for the gaps, we go, and we see, and we try to seek out things, and if we can't find them, we can't find them. 

[00:28:57] Benjamin Maxim: And, and one thing that, you know, I'm gonna try to experiment with in the next year as we roll out our new digital platform, we've kind of been waiting for this idea to, to really take hold because of this, is to create a new way to view your, kind of all the relationships and all these different pieces that you know we're gonna have in the customized sense, where you may have 13 FinTech relationships, and you wanna see, you know, the key pieces of information from those,

[00:29:21] like, you know, we have a FinTech partner that you're doing your budgeting with another, that you're paying down debt with, uh, another one that you got loan with. And you can take the key pieces of information and show them in, like, an Instagram, you know, scroll-wall style, you know, there are gonna be people who want that standard ledger balance,

[00:29:37] they wanna see their or ledger style, like, account summary, they see their balances, they can click and see their transactions. But let's give you all these key insights and information and be more proactive with helping you manage your finances in this kind of social feed that we're used to scrolling endlessly on.

[00:29:52] And, and that's really how we're trying to get to that personalization and, and that is a combination of build, buy, and customize because all these different things, you know, are different components that have come from one of those different paths.

[00:30:02] Josh DeTar: Yeah, that's a good point, and that goes back to something that you mentioned earlier, right? At the end of the day, what you're trying to do is, irregardless of whether you get it from, you know, one vendor or 500 vendors, the members shouldn't know or care. 

[00:30:15] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly. 

[00:30:15] Josh DeTar: To them, it should be a seamless experience that's all integrated smoothly, so they come in, and they just see, "Oh, cool, this is my relationship with MSUFCU and all the other things that I've plugged into it." So, that's kind of the challenge on your end is this gets more complex, right?

[00:30:29] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly. Yep. And that's kind of the, the kind of the thought process I had for, like, navigating that exact experience. So, someone's gonna have 500 of these things and another person had one, how do you engage them with one platform? And that becomes a challenge, and then some of these alternative enhancements, whatever you wanna call them, you know, experiences that are happening is these different apps from different providers,

[00:30:49] you shouldn't, like, a lot of, you know, 10 years ago we did a single sign-on to all these things, they had a bunch of, you know, high-frame portals, whatever. So, there's your, still, your logos at the top, but then it's just this whole experience inside. I think it's okay to take people out, show 'em the key information, and then they still, as long as they can get back to where they started, you know, there's no reason to not keep that full experience somewhere else, you know?

[00:31:11] And then if they want to, they can gauge in just that experience, you know, for certain things, and there's, sometimes, when that makes more sense than starting in digital banking.

[00:31:18] Josh DeTar: That makes sense. I wanted to go back to one thing that you were talking about earlier as you were talking through this, just build by partner. So, obviously, you guys are gonna probably approach this a little bit differently depending on what the product or service is. I think you kind of answered my question a little bit as you were going, but, you know, sometimes you may look at it and say, you know what, this is a commodity service, you know, this is just a, it needs to be an A, B thing and we don't need to worry about building it, maintaining it, let's just go buy it from somebody. 

But how do you guys sometimes look at and go through the requirements of we need X, Y, and Z. Are we going to build this ourselves? Are we gonna buy it from somebody, or are we gonna partner with somebody, you know? Or are we gonna, as the CUSO, you know, even consume it as something and bring that company in, like you have done. So, how do you guys kind of walk through that process internally?

[00:32:11] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah. So, it all starts the same. You have to define your requirements. So, we've really tried to enable the business as the people involved in defining those requirements. So, 10 years ago, everything was in IT, every new project, everything, there was an IT component. So, IT would lead all that evaluation, and they'd be like, "Oh, well."

[00:32:27] And it was very much focused on the tech, it wasn't necessarily focused on the experience of the member, the experience of the employee. So, really we've spent many years getting the business leaders and the different domains, payments, lending, branches, mortgages, all the different, you know, areas of the credit union to really own the experience of their products and services and their kind of domain within the, the company.

[00:32:50] And then provide that influence based on the feedback they're hearing from their employees, their, their members they're working with. And then creating a list of requirements from that group. Here's how we need to support the employees, here's how we need to support the members. And then really it, we at that point then go look for solutions first,

[00:33:08] Benjamin Maxim: you know, 'cause it's obviously easiest if we start with something that's established, we don't wanna create something that already exists

[00:33:12] Josh DeTar: So, you should start, is there that already exists? 

[00:33:14] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly. So, we start, and then we see, okay, there's some things, we have some calls, you know, maybe there's 10 vendors for this one thing or three vendors. We try to narrow it down to two or three for, like, a kind of a final true, like, deep dive, kind of what they are.

[00:33:28] So, based on, you know, many factors of, you know, how easy were they to work with, how secure are their, what technology stack are they using? How well did they integrate with our systems? That's kind of the technical review. And then we have an evaluation, did we get enough of what we want from that vendor search?

[00:33:44] And if we did, you know, if we get close enough, we'll probably pick something there, and then we make a decision, you know, is it good out of the box? Is it, we used to have this kind of analogies we were talking about, like, the stock versus taking it, like, the customization shop, you know, adding all the neon lights and the fancy striping and all that kind of stuff.

[00:34:00] You can do that later. So, like, but if you wanna drive from point A to point B, let's buy the car, you can start driving, and then you can drop it off another day, customize the wheels, customize whatever, and those are smaller projects and are a lot more manageable and, and kind of bring it back to kind of our innovation kind of mindset, really trying to communicate to our entire, like, employee base that innovation is making stuff better today than it was yesterday.

[00:34:23] So, you know, buying that stock car, that stock product, based product may actually get our members 90% of what they want. So, let's do that instead of wasting time doing all these customizations to get this pixel-perfect, absolutely wonderful experience when you could deliver something day one that gets you a good portion of the way there and improves experience for the members.

[00:34:43] And the members start to get used to that concept that you are gonna continuous improve, and it's not just like, "Oh, well, we did this big launch," and "This is all I'm ever gonna get out of you, and I'm gonna leave you 'cause I'm gonna have to wait five years to get what I think I need out of it." And then, kind of if we miss on that, you know, vendor where there isn't enough of what, or there's not enough control or, you know, if we ask them, well how, if we request upgrades or we request, you know, customizations, how does that work?

[00:35:08] Can we do it? Can you do it, like, and if you do it, how much does it cost? What is it? And sometimes the economics work out better for us to build it. Sometimes, you know, we want something faster than can be delivered, and really, the more we've done things, and the way APIs are now taken over the world, there's a lot more stuff you can just kind of integrate very easily into existing things or tie things together, that's not what it used to be. 

[00:35:29] So, you know, a lot of times we don't truly need to build something in scratch, from scratch, and we can start with maybe an STK or a series of APIs and kind of take that and build out maybe the interface and we wanna control the interface or plug it into an existing interface versus needing to create the whole experience.

[00:35:43] So, less and less we're building from scratch, and more and more we're trying to tie in things, uh, with APIs and build platforms. So, our dev team spends a lot of time building the connectors and platforms to enable all of this. So, you probably could call that customization, but a lot of our build now is enabling, being able to plug in all these different entities.

[00:36:03] I'm really glad that you used the car example, Ben, one, just because I'm a total car nerd, and I use car examples all the time. And so, now I can tell my wife somebody else has started with this, not me. 

[00:36:14] Benjamin Maxim: Hey, you know, I am from Detroit, so. But I, I think it is a really easy example for people to follow, right, like, because there is an element of having the commodity elements of a product or service, right? Like, if I want a car, then it needs to have four wheels, it needs to have a chassis, like, it's gotta have a steering wheel, should 

[00:36:33] Josh DeTar: probably have brakes and a motor and those types of things. You know, but I also like the example that you use of that as can we go buy the car from the market? And as the get us close enough, because, you know, if what you really need is a truck and what they're offering is a car, then it doesn't work

[00:36:49] And maybe you have to go build a truck, right? But if what you need is a truck and somebody offers a truck, you're like, "Great, we don't need to build a truck." But then, once you get a hold of the truck, you can start to say, okay, "Does this truck work for me as is, or do we need to monkey around with it?"

[00:37:05] And then the question becomes, "Well, are we doing full customization, or are we configuring it?" And, know, I had a really phenomenal guest on the podcast a while back, Bill Kinnelly from KGA Advisory Group, and Bill and I talked a lot about the difference between configuration and customization.

[00:37:25] And so, let's say you've decided that you want a truck, and you found someone who sells a truck, and the truck is pretty darn close to what you want, but, you know, maybe you want new wheels and tires.

[00:37:36] So, then question becomes, do you go to a customization shop and say, "Hey, I wanna set of wheels that no one else in the world has, I want you to completely custom build these for me." Or do you go in and say, "Hey, I see you've got 10 different wheels behind the counter there. I'd like option number four, please."

[00:37:57] So, that's kind of the difference between configure and customize, and they both have their benefits, right? Like, if you want to be truly one-off and custom and you want to go to this, we're taking this example real far now, like, you wanna go to this, you know, truck show and you wanna win best of 

[00:38:10] show because you have completely custom wheels, and you're okay with the fact that if you accidentally curb one, like, you've gotta get a completely custom set of wheels again because you're on this island of, you know, one, or do you say, I'm happy with option three of the 10 options that were offered, therefore I can stay in the configuration path. 

[00:38:31] So, you know, how do you guys figure out whether, now, once you've decided this build by partner, once you've got this truck, now, how do you decide now whether you customize something, whether you configure something, and, and how do you approach that?

[00:38:47] And, and I liked where you were going with this idea of, you know, now that the world's kind of opened up APIs, you can kind of leverage some of that to customize, but in a configuration method. So, I don't know, maybe walk me through how you guys think about that.

[00:38:58] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, no, I think configuration and customization's a really great distinction, and sometimes you can get that configuration from the original vendor, the original piece of software, you just need to turn on different things or turn off certain things, and when you put it out to members, you know, you may have picked option three, and they don't react to option three,

[00:39:14] and then you can go back and maybe select option four and, and you can do some small tweaks and, and really refine it. So, yeah, we do, we do, mostly we try to create that feedback loop, right? So, from members and then also from employees 'cause something may work really well for members, but the management of it, you know, maybe, like, there's this one manual process where, oh my gosh, you know, we now need three FTEs to manage this thing because we didn't think through how this was gonna work.

[00:39:38] Well, can we then automate that thing, and those three FTEs can go back to do something else? So, you know, those are some of the things to evaluate, you know, there are 

[00:39:45] Josh DeTar: I don't mean to cut you off, but I think that's super important point that I think a lot of times gets missed, too, right? Is 

[00:39:51] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. 

[00:39:52] Josh DeTar: Yes, don't get me wrong, like, end of the day, you know, member experience is number one, but if member experience is phenomenal, employee experience sucks, it's gonna open up a whole new can of worms. So, you do have to look at both sides, that is a really valuable point. 

[00:40:04] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, if the employees are, if the employees are not happy, they're gonna be the biggest tanker of whatever you're trying to roll out, and they're gonna tell members, "Oh, I don't know about that." That's pretty awful because they feel it's awful because of the burden that's been now put on them.

[00:40:17] So, really, you know, as we're testing out solutions, we try to make sure we have, you know, small-member groups with employee group supporting it. So, we see both sides, so we know, and that isn't a training thing, you know, maybe we just didn't given 'em the right tools, you know, and, and I think there's nothing more frustrating to an employee when they're trying to do something and members yelling at them because, you know, and they, they, they don't have the resources,

[00:40:36] Benjamin Maxim: they don't know who to talk to, they don't know how to help them through the situation, and then just like, "Yeah, I don't know, just don't use it." You know? And, and then that kills whatever initiative you have going. But yeah, no, so focusing on employee experience feedback, member experience feedback, looking at how, and many things,

[00:40:51] there are KPIs, there are, you know, we try to set a model out from finance or finance team before we launch something that we expect, if somebody's supposed to bring an x number of, uh, new loans or x number of new members, or, you know, reduce our expenses by whatever amount, you know, we come back and evaluate that.

[00:41:09] And maybe that's where some of the tweaking comes into the configuration happens, it's like, you know, we were offering this level of whatever because it was maybe incrementally cheaper, too, from the vendor. So, we try to balance, like, we don't wanna have these super high expenses, but maybe you do need to pay a little bit more for that premium offering

[00:41:25] that makes it a little bit stronger, better, faster, whatever it is, but you don't wanna start there. So, you know, you get the feedback tested out and then move, and a lot of what we've done in the lab is really give us the opportunity to create this feedback loop and understand, hey, this is the base product,

[00:41:39] Benjamin Maxim: and what we've been doing with, with a lot of our FinTech partners is they usually have an app that's direct to consumer, and we have our members try out that direct to consumer app, give us feedback on that before we spend time taking those APIs and building it into any, anything we have at the credit union.

[00:41:54] And then if we get some traction there with that version, then we take the next step, let's build to the APIs and maybe smartly figure out, you know, maybe these three things are the things that members wanted most, pull them into the experience, so they don't have to go get this separate app, and then after that, then you do even further building.

[00:42:09] But really, it's making sure to kind of be conservative with your resources as much as possible, minimize risk as well. So, I think one of the big things that scuttles testing and innovation is this kind of concept that us, as credit unions, are very protective of our members' data, which we should be,

[00:42:25] but there are ways to deliver that data as anonymized data, as synthetic data, as, you know, it's not associated with a member. You know, we have something we can match it up to on our side, but that FinTech doesn't know anything about it, there's nothing in there that they can do anything with on its own.

[00:42:40] So, we test that way, and then, again, if that anonymized data works, then maybe we give them the opportunity to come in and then do with full access to the data as well. They've proven, given an opportunity to prove themselves. So, there's a lot that can be done on a smaller scale and then build upon it with gates

[00:42:57] Benjamin Maxim: to really evaluate, do you need to tweak the configurations, or do you truly need to customize it, take those APIs and pull it into your own experience? Or is it just, “Hey, you know, we like to partner with the FinTech partners we're working through and bringing through the Lab,” so, maybe, you know, they're, this is, we're all quite often their first credit union client,

[00:43:14] and maybe us asking them, based on our feedback, to change and reconfigure some of how they've laid out their UI or their process, and that can be the configuration part as well.

[00:43:25] Josh DeTar: You know, feedback's such an important part of that, and you had talked about earlier, like, we, uh, could have the number off, but, you know, Chase has 20,000 developers, right?

[00:43:34] Benjamin Maxim: Yep.

[00:43:35] Josh DeTar: It's a ridiculous number, let's just put it that way, it's a lot more, it's a lot more than you, and I have combined, let's put it that way. But they also have a lot more users than you and I combined, right? 

[00:43:46] Benjamin Maxim: They do, absolutely.

[00:43:47] Josh DeTar: So, they have a lot more ability to test at scale and get feedback at scale. So, how do you guys approach getting feedback when, I mean, arguably, you guys are a very large credit union, right? You have hundreds of thousands of members.

[00:44:02] We still don't have millions and millions of users or millions of data points. So, how do you guys go about looking at feedback and saying, "Okay, is this just one really crazy, loud, noisy member, or is this really what our entire membership is looking for?"

[00:44:17] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, no, that, I think that's something we struggled with, especially early on as we did more and more stuff on our own and building it out where, like, we set out to build it on our own because we wanted, you know, a really positive member experience. And when, you know, 10 members send us a message on the first day and says, "This thing's horrible, why did you do this?"

[00:44:32] You're like, "Oh, my gosh, 10 people told us it's horrible." Then you gotta remember to put it in context that we do have 100,000 members or 300,000 members now, and it's like, "Oh, what is the percentage of 10 people out of this many?" You know, and there are so many more people that didn't tell us anything, and they just use it.

[00:44:46] So, we had to start learning to set some metrics that we could actually look at without having to be told, "Hey, this is how I felt about it." And on the other side, "Oh, I love this thing, you do the greatest thing ever." But then they don't actually use it, you see no use, you see no ROI coming in

[00:44:59] 'cause, you know, we were supposed to bring in all these loans, and people love how easy it is to get the loan or whatever, but they don't actually go get the loan, you know, so who cares that they thought it was great. So, you know, on both sides, you know, you gotta balance it out, so you don't get, like, positively inflated or negatively inflated.

[00:45:13] And, and really helping our employees understand that when they're hearing it from a bunch of people, like, at the teller end or over the phone, like, there's gonna be some level that's like, "Hey, people just don't like change, let's give 'em some chance to get used to it." So, you know, we've gotten this not just with tech stuff, but, you know, we just remodeled a branch that was one of our busiest branches.

[00:45:32] And we talked about this, you know, at our board meeting the other night, "Hey, you know, we're getting all this feedback about the, the remodel." And it's like, well, you know, usually when we do a remodel at a branch for three months, we hear a lot of negative feedback, and that kind of tapers off after that.

[00:45:44] Benjamin Maxim: And some of it is people just getting used to the new way of working, and there's new technology and it, it is just, like, you've changed things on them, so you really need to fix it. So, it's balance, it's making sure everything makes sense, and we started offering, you know, those 10 to, 10 to 15, like, really, maybe most upset member who, you know, they tend to, oh, they, they're always like, "Oh, I work for Apple," or I work for whoever.

[00:46:06] And they're like, "Oh, I know, you know, how to do this way better than you all." We actually started offering the opportunity to join our member panel. So, we do have a member panel that's grown to about 680 people, uh, now, and we really offer 'em the opportunity to kinda be the first to test things, and by doing so, even if we don't do it, their way, they felt heard,

[00:46:23] they felt like they're a part of it, and, you know, really that gives them the opportunity to have a say, even if we don't do it their way, and because they had a say, they feel a part of the build process, so.

[00:46:34] Josh DeTar: Yeah, that's a really valuable point, I mean, just giving people an opportunity to have their voices be heard. A lot of times, that's really what they're looking for, and I definitely think an interesting balance in looking at what is something that is a very important for the credit union to take this feedback, look at long-term strategies for, and what's also maybe just noisy or in front of them right now, or is kind of the hot topic in the news.

[00:47:03] So, I'm, I'm gonna take a huge bunny trail, but I think it's just really relevant while we're talking about, you know, this concept of, of how do we take the feedback from, you know, what's in front of people right now. We'll come back to what we've been talking about, but I think crypto's a great example of that, right? 

[00:47:18] And you and I were kind of talking about this before we started recording, you know, it's funny, I actually sat on a panel with Sara Dolan from MSUFCU at NACUSO last year, and we were on a panel to talk about crypto and to talk about, you know, cryptocurrencies as, one, an investment, and two, as a money movement tool, and

[00:47:40] I was laughing with Ben, and I was like, "Man, I, I really hope that that's recorded somewhere, I'd love to go back and re-watch what I said on that panel, and I'm really curious to see if it stood the test of time." Because I remember at the time, Sara and I kind of agreeing on the fact that, you know, a lot of credit unions were freaking out, going, "We have to have a strategy about crypto," and their strategy about crypto,

[00:48:02] what they meant was, we have to offer buy, sell, hold of crypto in digital banking. And they were all hot about this, and everybody was like, "We gotta have it, we gotta have it, we gotta have it, we gotta have it." And I made a comment, I said, "Yeah, I think that you're saying that because Bitcoin's worth like $66,000 a coin at the time."

[00:48:19] And I was like, "What happens if that sucker just tanks?" And here we are today, and that sucker tanked, right? I haven't looked, but I think it's, what, sub 15,000 a coin?

[00:48:32] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, haven't looked in a while, less since I saw it was 20, so it's been a while since I’ve been bothered to look.

[00:48:36] Josh DeTar: Let's just, it's a lot less than it was, and funny enough, I don't hear anybody talking about offering buy, sell, hold crypto in digital banking.

[00:48:44] Benjamin Maxim: Well, yeah, actually, what I've heard is like, oh, our members are actually gonna hold us accountable 'cause they bought it through us, and they're gonna sue us and say, "Hey, give us."

[00:48:51] Josh DeTar: Yeah. So, so, it's just, I think it's a really, like, obnoxious example of having to be really thoughtful about the strategy instead of just saying, we have to jump because other people are jumping, right? 

[00:49:03] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. And I think the other kind of ridiculous example at the moment is Metaverse, you know, I can't tell you the number of questions I've got in the past three months about "What are you doing with Metaverse?" It's like, well, I know, let's see what happens with it first, you know, nothing happened with Second Life,

[00:49:14] everyone's gonna put a bank in Second Life, and that was, you know, the closest thing possible. Then you also look at what kids are doing today, and they're playing Roblox, and there's real currency that they're exchanging in there, you can go buy gift cards at, like, Target for Roblox or whatever they're called, you know, so there, there is some, like, virtual currency, virtual world kind of a thing going on, but it's not in the metaverse where it's really taken off, you know?

[00:49:35] And there, there may be a reason to do the Metaverse in a few years, but, you know, you don't just jump into it, maybe you go jump in and get your stake in the ground and be like, "Hey, you can't take my branding assets." But you don't jump in, in full, and be like, "I'm gonna put a million-dollar virtual branch in there to hope, you know, to get a big splash."

[00:49:51] Crypto, you know, I think the technology behind it has always been the most valuable piece, you know, people have been talking about blockchain for 10-plus years, you know, Bitcoin was, you know, if we all bought, you know, a hundred dollars worth bitcoin in 2012 or whenever we'd all not be doing podcasts anymore, we'd be on our islands and our yachts and all that good stuff as long as we sold at the right time.

[00:50:11] So, really, yeah. But that is what happens, there's trends that everyone's like, "Oh, we gotta jump on this." And it does seem to take fire in the credit unions 'cause we're very collaborative, we got all these events, we hear the same things from the same speakers, and yeah, people try to jump on it, like, we need a strategy tomorrow for this thing,

[00:50:24] Benjamin Maxim: or maybe yesterday, uh, is a better way to say that, and, you know, if we jump too quickly, then here you go. Buy Now Pay Later was the biggest thing going as well, alongside crypto. There are some people who've tried to solve that in the credit union space, there are some that have sold it outside a bit, you know, and right now the CFB starts whispering on how they're gonna start looking into these unregulated loans,

[00:50:44] and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, maybe we don't wanna figure out how to do Buy Now Pay Later as it is today, we wanna figure out how to use our products that we've always had to enable people to purchase things and split up transactions, and I think there's been a lot of creativity that's come from that.

[00:50:57] Like, how do you compete with these, you know, that's not the way it's offered by a Klarna or an Afterpay, you know, there are things that exist and you, they're going back to things, like, American Express or Chase had these, like, you know, you had this transaction, and you can split payments over time, and, you know, you can automate that and all that.

[00:51:11] So, there's a lot of options there. Crypto, you know, being able to offer solutions on the blockchain or using crypto or maybe, you know, not a Bitcoin or Ethereum, but maybe, you know, the stablecoins, the fiat currencies issued as digital money basically, as a way to really move this forward, you know, and, and some of the conversations I've had recently, too, are credit unions don't offer, you don't necessarily buy stock directly from a credit union,

[00:51:36] you may offer wealth management services, we can refer someone to a broker, and you get some percentage cut of what's under management, but we're not offering the actual stock trading, you know, so that buy, sell holds crypto, yes, we want people in our, in our walls, but that's not what we're offering as a, a service anywhere else,

[00:51:52] that investment piece, you know, we enable that, but we don't offer it. So, what are the things that credit unions and other financial services firms, you know, can offer, like, loans or payments or, you know, maybe things that are a little bit more unique, like a title for a car through the blockchain? That one, that's, that's one that's interesting 'cause we can't just go, you know, the technology that you could go build it tomorrow, you know, I know here's his title, but if the government, you know, the state, federal, whatever, don't recognize that, you know, if there's no honoring that, you know, moving forward from different entities or dealers or other institutions, literally no point in having that.

[00:52:25] So, you know, I think there's some states like Utah, I think, is offering like a digital driver's license, you know, that's moving us, you know, in the way where some of this stuff might actually make a little bit more sense if the government's gonna get involved in that level of innovation. So, we'll have to wait and see on, on stuff like that, but, you know, there's a lot of cool things that can come that, Bitcoin's the flashy thing, but what is the actual underlying technology that we can start to leverage and innovate on top of.

[00:52:47] Josh DeTar: Yeah, you made so many good points in there, you know, I think it's interesting you used Roblox as the example. I don't know if you saw the news today, they just, uh, lost a lawsuit.

[00:52:55] Benjamin Maxim: Oh, I missed that.

[00:52:57] Josh DeTar: To the tune of, I think it was 520 million, they're gonna be required to pay back essentially for tricking kids into making purchases. And so, I, I think that's the reason I bring this up is I think that's also a great example of, you know, when we were talking earlier about go and see how many financial apps you have on your phone, like, how many people would've said Roblox would be one that they would add into that, but should, right?

[00:53:22] Benjamin Maxim: Should be, absolutely. There's money coming in and out of that, yeah. 

[00:53:25] Josh DeTar: Money came in, in and out of it. Exactly. So, I think going back to what you were talking about, if just there's so many shiny objects, right? And I don't think that where sometimes we get a bad reputation for being, you know, slow to innovate or not fast enough on the fast follower spectrum, there is some value in that, right?

[00:53:46] There is some value in saying, "Hey, you know what? There may be a handful of noisy members that are asking for this, there may be a lot of news stories about this, it may be the hot topic right now, but maybe there is some value in us hanging on, holding off, waiting, seeing what happens, seeing what type of regulation goes around it, seeing what actual adoption is, is this thing the important thing or is the underlying technology the important thing, and do we need to leverage that?" And I think that was a great example that you're using of, you know, blockchain for things like titling, right? So, yeah, I just, I, I think it's, it's what...

[00:54:21] Benjamin Maxim: I dunno, maybe I'll challenge you a little bit on this, a little bit. So, I think you do need to get in early and investigate it to the point where you have a strategy, right? So, maybe you don't roll out buy, sell, hold, but you're doing the research to know that you shouldn't, and you're making a purposeful decision.

[00:54:34] And I think that's where we've been successful, is we've created these entities with Reseda Group and the Lab where we can test and experiment without compromising the core business function. So, I wrote an article that was published not too long ago about kind of this concept of artists and soldiers and the artists,

[00:54:48] Benjamin Maxim: and this comes from a book called Loonshots by Safi Bahcall, where basically you are using Apple as maybe the more prominent example where, you know, there's Steve Jobs and the Johnny Ive who are designing the new iPhone, and it's all the fun, you know, exciting stuff, and then there's Tim Cook, making sure that Apple still makes enough money to function while they're working on these things.

[00:55:06] And if you don't have the innovation, you don't get your company to a trillion dollar evaluation, but if you're always just focused on this core business model, that needs, they need to feed you into each other. So, the core business is making sure that things are coming, but if it stays stale, you end up, like, Blockbuster, Blackberry,

[00:55:23] pick your examples of those companies that thought they were at the top and they didn't need to. And it may take 20, 30 years for these companies to fizzle out, but if they're never figuring out how to get that cycle where they're feeding into each other, you know, kind of the new and the existing business model, you know, you're just gonna be stuck.

[00:55:37] So, you may have success still, but it was not gonna be sustained, and that's really where some of these companies that have been around for a hundred years, they figured that out.

[00:55:44] You know, you made a comment to me that I, I wanted to bring up before we started recording that was, you know, when you first kind of took on this innovation role at MSUFCU, you kind of felt like you were on a little bit of an island, you were like, "There, there was, like, one or two other people doing what I did, and, you know, when I finally found them and was like, 'Hey, we should talk.' They were like, 'Yeah, I'm too busy. Sorry.'"

[00:56:06] Josh DeTar: And now that's starting to be a lot more prevalent, right? You're starting to see that there are more titles like yours at credit unions, and I think that's a direct response to exactly what you were just saying, right?

[00:56:17] Is that whether you actually jump right in or not, you have to have a strategy, you have to be talking about it, you have to have people that are executing on things that we've ultimately decided are execution tracks we need to go after, but we also have to have somebody that's looking at and going, "All right, so should we be doing crypto?

[00:56:36] Should we be doing BNPL? Should we be doing, you name the thing?"But having somebody that's actually just dedicated and focused to the strategy of it, you're starting to see more of those roles pop up, right?

[00:56:47] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. So, yeah, no, absolutely. And it's been a quick two and a half years, you know, since maybe almost three years now since I've been in this role. Yeah, the titles are changing, there are more people trying to do that. I participate in type 3 program, and as been going to those events over the past few years, there are a lot of people who are in roles like this with maybe not always with the title, but people who've been kind of identified as people who are trying to do this kind of research.

[00:57:08] And I think the thing we learned from them and why we've been successful where maybe they haven't at their credit unions is we have the support at the executive level to do something with the innovation after, like, the testing is done, you know. So, I have a colleague, Ami Iceman, who is kind of my partner in crime, if you will, whatever, where, you know, we worked together

[00:57:26] at the beginning, she also researched, I kind of test it out and then give it over to her when it's time to scale it, we said, "Hey, this thing's good." She launches it in digital, you know, later whatever company, and if it's not a digital thing, it's payments, whatever, we get the vice president, executive team member from that area to be involved and be the champion of it to full execution. And there's a lot of times when this term's been out there that I've heard of innovation theater where there's a lab and a person, and they do all this stuff, and they present to the board, but that's the end of the innovation, there's no implementation of all that work,

[00:57:57] you know, there's not even a capturing necessarily of the learning that's saved for the future. So, you know, if nothing else, innovation's meant to, you know, fail fast, but I really like to determine, learn fast because you're supposed to learn quickly and then move on, you know, and if it worked out, you keep moving, and you take the next step.

[00:58:11] If you discover that you shouldn't go any further, well, you've captured that, and then maybe three years from now, the market opportunity is different, you know, right now, everyone's trying to get deposits. Well, six months from now, we all be trying to get mortgages or loans again, who knows what happens when interest rates shift?

[00:58:23] So, we don't know what's gonna happen, but being able to then pick that off the shelf and be like, "Hey, did the market change?" "Nope. Here's what we did before, it's all the same." "Good. We don't need to worry about spending time on that." Or, "Hey, it did change, let's pick it off the shelf, we did two years worth of work already on this,

[00:58:36] Benjamin Maxim: let's just bring that up, and we're two years ahead of the game." So, really making sure that, you know, for those of you listening, supporting those innovators and trying to help them find a path forward from that, "Hey, we experimented, found this to be a good solution." How do you actually make that a successful thing for your members ultimately, and bring it forward to the forefront and get that thing out to all who should have it?

[00:58:57] Josh DeTar: Oh, man, I can't, like, stress this point enough, like you said, like, for those of you listening, please take note of this in whatever role you are in, agreed. We see this so much, I love that term, like, innovation theater, right? Like, we've put together this elaborate presentation, all of our research and learnings and ideas, and we bring it, and everybody's like, "This is so great."

[00:59:21] And then that's where it goes to die, and there's a couple of things that I think come outta that is, one, are the ideas that are being brought forward, actually bad ideas, not fully vetted and should be shot down, there, there's a possibility there, right? 

[00:59:34] But if they're not, if they're really solid and they're backed by the research and, you know, you've got all of the i's dotted and ts crossed for this, and then it just ultimately goes, and whether it fails with the executive team or whether it fails with the board, but repeatedly, that's gonna stifle innovation, right? 

[00:59:51] And somebody like yourself who loves to do this, who gets excited by this, I mean, could you imagine how quickly you would turn in your resignation at MSUFCU if you just constantly brought ideas and they got shot down, you'd be like, "Okay, cool, I'm gonna go somewhere they were gonna listen to my ideas." Right? So, there has to be buy-in. 

[01:00:09] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly, and you're losing talent, yeah, you're losing talent along the way. And one thing, another thing that's been really great about this, even if we weren't to get things out because there wasn't the time or space, or we need to wait a year because we need to hire people, whatever, the employees working on these ideas and validating and bringing them to fruition, there's so much more, like, lift in their morale and engagement with their credit union and they feel like they matter, no matter what role they're coming in.

[01:00:31] So, when we do our innovation labs, we do 20-week sessions, and we come and they, they, we kind of treat, like, training where you come and meet with, I now have a couple employees that run the actual day-to-day of the Lab, but, you know, they would come and meet with us one day a week, it's like they're with training,

[01:00:44] you forget whatever your day job was, you'd be from the branches, accounting, marketing, wherever, you know, if you come, you meet with us, we work on an idea for a day, then you go back to your job, you forget about innovation, then you come back the next week and that way we don't have to hire 30 people to do innovation.

[01:00:57] We can pull people from the business, and these people going through this program, you know, we survey them, and they're, you know, saying they're like 95% more engaged in their job, they feel like they make a difference at their credit union, and, and the retention bonus that it gives, especially now when we're all fighting in this war for talent, like, these are the kind of things that if you do these activities, especially one of the most, like, the comments that were made to this point, is they want us, they love that they had access to something that they'd see go into production that members would actually use.

[01:01:21] So, making sure to take it, boost said even further. So, you know, really making sure that they're able to work on something that affects real members, you know, for many of them, if you're in the, the branch, yes, you work day to day, and you do this thing, but maybe you don't have the opportunity to, like, work on a project and you, maybe you're technically inclined, or maybe you're like, oh, I wanna do this.

[01:01:38] They now have the opportunity to do something that's different, they get to have a, a creative outlet versus like, oh, I just, you know, deposit checks all day long, which I know that's not what we do so much anymore. But, like, they're not doing the mundane things all day, every day, and this gives them a little bit of life and breathe life into them.

[01:01:53] So, I think there's an opportunity there to think about it from a retention or for talent, angle recruiting possibility, as well, in addition to all the other great benefits for kind of the, the members and your kind of bottom line as well.

[01:02:05] Josh DeTar: Yeah, buy-in's super important, right? I mean, from both ends of the spectrum, from either being the executive team and having them bought in to wanting to offer these cool things to, you know, having the team that's, like, boots on the grounds have buy-in, 

[01:02:20] you know, you made the comment at the very start of the podcast of if you shove something down their throat that they're not in love with, that they're not bought in on, absolutely, you're gonna have a member that's gonna come in and say, "Hey, this super cool new thing that you guys launched in the app, I'm just kind of struggling to use."

[01:02:36] And they happen to go into a branch, and the MSR that they interact with is like, "Yeah, I don't know, that thing's kind of dumb, and it's so annoying on the back end too."

[01:02:43] Like, what do you, you, you think the member's gonna adopt that? Like, absolutely not, but if they go, "Oh, you know what? No, this thing's super cool, I actually got to be a part of that project, you know, we’re kind of still in early stages, so this feedback's super helpful, I'm gonna take it back to my team." Like, it's gonna be very different member experience.

[01:03:00] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly. Oh, yeah, exactly.

[01:03:02] Josh DeTar: So, along that same lines of just talking about you're starting to see more people with titles like yours at credit unions which I also agree, I think is super cool to see, you know, one of the things that you also mentioned was just that, especially with what you guys formed with the Reseda Group and just kind of how you're approaching the innovation that's coming out of MSUFCU and the Lab is this idea that, 

[01:03:25] you know, credit unions should be collaborating with each other and supporting each other and having an opportunity to kind of pass back and forth that knowledge and even the ability to leverage some of the things that you've built because, yeah, I mean, let's, let's, you know, be super blunt here, you're a 75-million-dollar credit union, and you are, you're expected to compete with Huntington just the same way you guys are. So, how do you do that, right? If you don't have the resources like you were saying, I mean, Chase may have 20,000 developers, you guys have 40, credit union, 75 million has zero.

[01:03:59] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly. 

[01:04:00] Josh DeTar: Negative two 'cause their CEO is also their CTO and also their janitor and also. So, talk me through a little bit of just kind of how you guys looked at the importance of being able to collaborate and give back to the industry and how that ultimately brought about building a CUSO and, and kind of how you guys thought about, you know, sharing of products and ideas.

[01:04:19] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, absolutely. So, I kind, it's twofold. So, you know, if we're gonna do this CUSO and we're gonna make all these partnerships, they become stronger the more credit unions use them. So, if we can enable that 75-million-dollar credit union to do some of the stuff that we tried to do by, you know, having this small team that had joined the credit union when we were 1 billion,

[01:04:35] you know, and we can build these things, and we can have partners that build these things. You don't have to worry about, you know, having 20,000 developers 'cause you have this really great product that's already been built, and you're just, it's just teaching those FinTechs through what we're doing in the Reseda Group, how to interact with credit unions, what's important to credit unions, what's important to our members, most importantly.

[01:04:53] So, yes, there's an ROI angle to many of these, but a lot of them really are, can be perceived as member benefits. So, you may pay $2 a month for a FinTech offering for your members, but that may actually be something that brings you $10 a member and revenue because of whatever lift they get because they're now engaging with you that much more, you know, there are some things that are straight ROI, you're getting more loans, you're getting more products on the books and all that, and that's great,

[01:05:18] Benjamin Maxim: or there things that are maybe more education driven, you're making stronger members. And, and one thing that I think has been really good for us is really, you know, at our core has been like we've, we've focused on financial education, yes, we're a university-based credit union, it's kind of at our core.

[01:05:30] And we've built up this really big team, and being able to share those resources with other credit unions is huge, one of our kind of early clients for that financial literacy, literacy group is a 350 million credit union, you know, and we'll have two, you know, credit unions on that,

[01:05:45] Benjamin Maxim: one will be a $7 billion Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, and the other is $350 million credit union that's looking for these services, you know, and I was at an event with them, and there these FinTechs were selling to them, they're like, "Oh, hey, we have all this stuff."

[01:05:58] And like, "No, no, no, we just need a website with some financial education content. Do you have that?" And they're like, "Oh, no, no, we're doing this, this, and this." And I was like, "Hey, here's something that we have that we can offer you." That is kind of to the whole point of what your question is,

[01:06:09] we're, we know credit unions, we know what they're looking for, we know how to speak to them, we know what, what's missing and what, what it means to have been, you know, a 75-million-dollar credit union at some point in our history as well. You know, when I started, we were 1.5 or 1.6 billion, but, you know, the first billion took, like, 70 years to achieve or something like that.

[01:06:25] Then the next billion was, like, 10 years, and then they come quickly after that, but, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we were kind of a small credit union as well. When I started the Lab three years ago, we were four and a half billion, there's a lot of growth that's happened because we've decided to take these risks, but really, credit unions and financial services, like, if you're doing it right and even if you're not doing it right, these things can grow on their own.

[01:06:45] It's just how do you want to, you know, direct the resources, and being able to give back, and why we started Reseda was we knew what we could have used 10 years ago, 15 years ago to help us accelerate, we want the industry to be stronger, if the industry's stronger, if people are thinking of credit unions first over banks, you know, right now I don't, I don't, many people don't know the difference or why you would choose one.

[01:07:05] So, we're trying to offer that opportunity, you know, to enable that conversation to even happen and take place. And I think a lot of the perception is we don't have the technology, well, here's the opportunity to have a technology to compete with Chase, Bank of America, Wells, if you're a 75-million-dollar community institution that probably at your core, you're doing a lot of stuff for your community, that if you can just get that story out, you start to grow because, like, oh, let's keep this money local.

[01:07:26] How many times do you hear about, you know, shop small and all that kind of stuff around Black Friday, it's the same concept with credit unions, you know, we saw a huge uptick in that around pandemic time, like, let's keep our money nearby with keeping the small businesses open, keeping the restaurants and the community opening, hey, let's keep our credit unions open as well.

[01:07:41] So, we're trying to give the tools that maybe they can't get on there, and we also are pricing things and encouraging pricing that if you're a 75--million-dollar credit union, you're not paying the same as MSFCU as the 7-billion-dollar credit union as well 'cause you shouldn't have to, the technology's built for the most part.

[01:07:56] So, except for some of the user fees that happen for some of these in the background services, you know, can be afforded because there's less usage as well of what's going on. So, I think there's a great opportunity there to really build this ecosystem in a way that works for credit unions to grow, and as they grow, you know, the whole market grows as well, so.

[01:08:13] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I mean, I think usage-based pricing is gonna be a really big value add to the community financial ecosystem, right? Because, you know, somebody like MSUFCU, obviously, you're gonna have substantially higher usage, therefore you can generate more ROI out of that expense of that product,

[01:08:31] whereas a small credit union is like, "Hey, we really wanna offer this product too, but we're only gonna have 500 users, not 100,000 users," but kind of combining forces gives the ability for them to be able to take advantage of that same great tech.

[01:08:45] Benjamin Maxim: Exactly. And the more credit unions that work together as well, you know, if we're testing out something, to the point, like, maybe the question you asked earlier, we don't have millions of members at our credit union, but we do have millions of members across the industry. So, if we can get some more industry-focused groups that are working together, and we're spreading it out, and we have five or ten credit unions testing something, maybe, you know, we then have a hundred thousand members between us on the test.

[01:09:08] Or if they're big enough credit union, maybe those 10 or 15 credit unions get to a million users that can actually try something out and really kind of put things through the ringer, and get that load testing done or make it work better at scale, and all that.

[01:09:21] Josh DeTar: You know, how have you guys thought about what types of products you offer through Reseda Group and what types of products make sense to kind of offer through that CUSO model?

[01:09:31] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of first and foremost, we don't offer anything that we wouldn't use at MSUFCU, maybe the one exception being we're invested in the circle fund, and that's maybe more our opportunity to be a little exploratory, see what comes out of that, there are other credit unions testing out some of those solutions, and maybe we can grab something from there

[01:09:47] because we can't test everything. So, that's, that's the one thing, but everything else in our portfolio we use or have intentions to use, and they're either starting in the Lab, or they're going to the Lab after we make an investment, and really we're working to, to build them out. We pick things that kind of plug holes that we see in the industry and try to strengthen them.

[01:10:04] Benjamin Maxim: So, financial education, you know, we have three offerings that are in financial education, but they're different use cases. One is, you know, young adult college kids, the other is kind of between young adult and retirement, and we have another one that's for pre-retirement and retirement. And, you know, in that we can offer a package, and that's kind of a whole lifelong financial education journey that you can then use.

[01:10:25] We have things that are focused on what we try to call, like, kinda life stage banking as well. So, people who are graduates from college will hear some offerings for you, people who are buying their first home, people are looking to pay down debt, there are different kind of, like, factors of the segments of the financial

[01:10:43] relationship you're gonna have with people, and they can grow from kind of one to the next. So, you know, one of our companies, they started by offering, you know, a way to help pay down student loans. Well, once you pay off your student loan, maybe you're able to buy a house. So, then their next offering is similar technology,

[01:10:57] Benjamin Maxim: pay down their mortgage a little bit quicker. And then you're, you know, so it, it's the same technology, just apply it a different way and that helps our members kind of grow with these different things. So, things that can then stick with you for more than just a segment, and they're also looking for platforms that enable some of these things to work together or work together for the industry.

[01:11:14] You know, we have one that is a geolocation push notification provider, everyone doesn't need to recreate those technologies, we can just share that with our portfolio, they can work together, partner, and then those are now offerings that everyone has and they can get an efficiency in scale, or, you know, Nextly, like you mentioned, is a digital banking platform.

[01:11:31] Benjamin Maxim: Well, if we can integrate all these things into there, then there's things that then if you get the Nextly platform, well, here's 15 FinTechs that come with that, if you'd like. You know, and a lot of digital banking providers have moved in that direction recently, I think that's a great opportunity, and we've seen some of our portfolio companies end up in that situation where they, "Hey, I'm gonna build and make a connection to this digital banking platform, and then I now get 10 credit unions, a 100 credit unions, 30 credit unions that I wouldn't have gotten if I didn't make that connection."

[01:11:59] So, I think there's a lot of opportunity to kind of mix, kind of platforms and get people to work together and then kind of figure out and fill in kind of those life stages, and we, we had a lot of stuff come to us all at once, once we started, you know, really picking up steam. So, now we're trying to take a step back and, like, really be a little bit more deliberate in what we bring in, you know, so we make sure we don't have things that are too overlapping, or at least if they overlap, are they a niche or something that can flow from one to the next, as well.

[01:12:24] Josh DeTar: Yeah, that's a good point. I agree that it's really cool to see the digital banking ecosystems start to open up, right? Digital banking's only become more and more important, right? I mean, it is your biggest branch, it's your highest transaction branch, it's your biggest brand touchpoint, period, end of story, anymore.

[01:12:43] So, it's a cornerstone of your business, and there's so many different niche products and features that you can offer in digital banking. So, it really does take kind of an open ecosystem approach of being able to openly and easily integrate to all these different, various third parties.

[01:12:57] But what's interesting is then on the flip side, you know, I'm sure you probably see it similarly to the way we do, a lot of these, you know, new product and service providers see digital banking as the opportunity to go sell their product quicker. And so, they just want to integrate to you and sell through your customer list type of thing.

[01:13:14] And it is a really important balance to look and see, you know, where is the value that's actually being offered in this, and who's actually looking for this? And I think it's really interesting to see how you guys have kind of approached that in the CUSO model. So, how would you kind of encourage credit unions to look at CUSOs, right?

[01:13:30] And to look at them as an offering in a way for them to be able to get access to some of this better plug-and-play technology.

[01:13:37] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think the CUSO label is almost starting to become kind of, like, a little bit of a stamp of intention of the company as well, like, not necessarily a stamp of approval, but if a company is intending to work with credit unions and somewhere along the way someone talked to them about what credit unions offer and they've made a purposeful decision to become a CUSO,

[01:13:54] and, and, you know, of our, you know, 14 companies in the portfolio, you know, or however many, you know, we've added a couple recently, but they've, they've had a purposeful discussion with us, and at first they're like, "What is a CUSO? Why would I do that?" And when you start to explain it to 'em, they're like, "Oh, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

[01:14:09] Of course we wanna do that." And sometimes, you know, they, they keep their parent company and then create a subsidiary CUSO or they fully, you know, become a CUSO, but the, the CUSO labeling is an intention to serve primarily credit union and credit union members. So, that alone knows that there's a focus on our, our needs,

[01:14:26] there's probably someone working with them to encourage them to become a CUSO. So, there's probably a credit union involved in their history along the way. So, when you're thinking and comparing vendors, if someone's at CUSO, they've done the work and are trying to do the work to serve credit unions, and they all are struggling to get credit unions to, you know, move quick enough or help them, or pilot with them.

[01:14:46] And, and I would encourage you all, you know, if you can't do five or six of 'em, you know, and that's okay, but pick one that's really meaningful to you and give 'em a shot. And, you know, I think, there's lots of opportunity within the CUSOs we're working with, there's a lot more CUSOs out there in the industry that we don't even know yet because they're doing such great work, but they're, they're under the radar sometimes, but there's usually a credit union helping them somewhere.

[01:15:09] Josh DeTar: Well, and that's a great example, too, just how, you know, credit unions can almost kind of give back to the industry that's giving back to them, is, you know, a lot of times you do see some of these smaller or startup organizations that are trying to figure out how do we get funding? How do we scale this business and this product?

[01:15:24] How do we get it in front of credit unions? This is a way for credit unions to say, "Hey, we believe in this and so much so that we're gonna invest in that CUSO." Right? This is your way as a nonprofit for being able to invest in the industry that's building things directly related to solving problems for you.

[01:15:42] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. Very well said. And a lot of these, many of them are started by credit unions themselves, it was just something that they did really well and figured out what works for them, and then now they're able to offer it to other credit unions. So, you don't have to do that work, but they've done it from a perspective, like, they've, yeah, you know, and there's many that have done, and a lot of, a lot of CUSOs, you know, you thought about 'em five, ten years ago,

[01:15:58] a lot of 'em were insurance companies, title companies, kinda mortgage companies, things like that, but a lot of 'em are now shifting to this, like, FinTech realm or, like, big data, or data analytics and, and whatever, maybe the, the credit union is really strong at, they've now created this business for others to take advantage of.

[01:16:14] Josh DeTar: Well, and that kind of goes back to what we've been talking about a lot, which is, you know, it's important for credit unions of all sizes to kind of have a FinTech strategy. So, to have some sort of strategy of how are we gonna work with FinTechs, how are we going to leverage them? All of the things that we have talked about play into all of that.

[01:16:30] But at the very least, you need to have a strategy, whether you're a $50-million credit union or a $7-billion credit union, you've gotta have some sort of strategy and you've gotta have some way of thinking about, okay, how do we work with these people in this industry, right? How do we connect all these dots? So, even just having somebody within the organization that is looking at that big picture and then looking at how do these things all work together? You don't have to have all the answers, right? You don't have to have the solution because there are folks out there that are figuring out the solution and figuring out how to connect all of these different things.

[01:17:08] And you guys are a prime example of that, of being able to say, hey, you know, we're helping credit unions, we started by just helping ourselves, and then we leveraged what we built for ourselves to help others, and say, hey, we're gonna try and make this kind of forest talk together, all these different trees, like, let's bring 'em all together, let's make 'em all integrate to each other.

[01:17:29] Josh DeTar: So even small credit unions can come in and say, hey, you know what? Here's kind of our strategy, here's what we're trying to execute on, we think we need these three things, but we need 'em all to work together. There are ways to solve that, but you have to start with the, this is what we're trying to accomplish. So, you have to have that strategy.

[01:17:44] Absolutely. It all works together.

[01:17:46] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Well, it's cool to see what you guys are doing there at MSUFCU, and, uh, it sounds like you're definitely having a, a little bit of fun with it.

[01:17:54] Benjamin Maxim: Just a little bit.

[01:17:57] Well, Ben, I really appreciate you taking the time to kind of walk us through a little bit of just kind of how you look at the industry and how your credit union and the CUSO that you guys have built are trying to help solve some of these problems, but before I let you go, I have two final questions for you.

[01:18:11] Josh DeTar: So, first off, where do you go to get information about what's happening in our industry? How do you stay up to date on the things that are important to, what you guys are working on?

[01:18:20] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, so, one of the main ways is I've actually managed to curate my LinkedIn feed by things I've liked and followed, that's usually a good kind of quick place to get, get that. For the credit union industry in particular, like, Finopotamus and then, uh, CU broadcast, podcast as well, I'll be listening to this one probably a little bit more as well than I used to,

[01:18:38] uh, as well, I've heard a lot, a lot of these great guests that you've talked about, so need to make sure, uh, I'm listening here as well, but yeah, no, I think there's a lot of things that are kind of one-offs that you kind of catch and by following different companies and following kind of press releases and news about what's going on in the both FinTech, but also, financial industry and, and looking beyond just what we're doing in finance and credit union,

[01:18:58] Benjamin Maxim: but what is Apple doing, Amazon, Square, who are the people that are, you know, we're interacting with as consumers, using your own experience, my own personal experience, engaging with different apps, trying new technologies, and just see, like, how is it different? What, what are they doing? Why did they create something?

[01:19:16] And, and really just looking out in the world and, you know, how do we relate that back to what, what, what we're doing. Maybe something that's fun, a little expensive, but my wife got me these Breo boxes for Christmas last year, and they're basically like a box of gadgets that come every quarter, and they have things in there that are just, like, products new to market,

[01:19:33] a lot of 'em is like hardware stuff or like stuff for the kitchen or grill or stuff like that, you know, and they're kind of seasonal. So, I got a bunch of stuff for the grill in the summer. Uh, I got this one little, like, dongle thing, I was like, "Oh, this is stupid. What is this?" But I got AirPods and I was like, it basically was a Bluetooth thing that allowed you to connect your AirPods to your plane seat,

[01:19:49] and I was like, for all the time I spent on the plane, now I don't have to have this, like, wire that I bring for these things, and I was like, "Oh, this was actually really cool," and I had this thing and I just kind of ignored it, I was like, well, let's explore what's in these boxes, what else do I have?

[01:20:00] So, like, you know, there, there's a lot of things out there to kinda get you exposed to, to different things. So, really, there's not many, like, one source, but it's like, how do you get in a lot of things, and then Fast Company is a good resource as well for that kind of, like, in general, what's going on in different industries.

[01:20:12] Josh DeTar: Awesome. And, um, if people want to connect with you and if they wanna learn a little bit more about the credit union and the CUSO and the Lab, how do they do that?

[01:20:22] Benjamin Maxim: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so find me on LinkedIn, connect with me, follow me, whatever you choose. Spend a lot of time in there every day, and then, credit union, MSUFCU.org, the Lab, MSUFCU.org/thelab, and then resedagroup.com, and between all of those, you'll figure out what we're up to, changes constantly,

[01:20:41] we always posted who we're working with, what we're doing. On the Lab page, you can see all the different pilots that are ongoing, how we recruit for new panelists for our member panel, and then also, you know, some things that are close out under the green-lighted pilot section, and then also Reseda Group, you wanna know who we're working with, there's links and logos for everyone we're working with there, as well.

[01:21:03] Josh DeTar: Awesome. Thanks, Ben. And we'll have all of those links on the web page for this podcast as well. So, again, just thank you so much for taking time outta your day to come and share all the knowledge that you have and that you have gained, just by the different kind of fun things that you've been doing with the credit union and the lab. Thanks for coming to being a guest on the podcast.

[01:21:21] Benjamin Maxim: No, absolutely. It's been a lot of fun, great conversation, can't believe, uh, we spent a whole hour-plus talking about all this stuff, we've been very, really quick, so it.

[01:21:27] Josh DeTar: It's crazy how the time flies, huh?

[01:21:29] Benjamin Maxim: Right?

[01:21:30] Josh DeTar: Yeah. 

[01:21:31] Benjamin Maxim: All the good stuff.

[01:21:31] Josh DeTar: Amazing. Well, thanks again, Ben, appreciate you taking the time to be on the Digital Banking Podcast.

[01:21:35] Benjamin Maxim: Absolutely. Thank you.

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