Modernizing the Credit Union Experience Without Losing Trust

What does it really take to modernize digital banking inside a credit union? In this episode, host Logan Lyles sits down with Eddie Sorrell (CIO, UK Credit Union), Justin Billig (CEO & Co-Founder, Tensure), and Joe Kerstanoff (Director of Platform Engineering, Tensure) to unpack how UK Credit Union transformed its online account opening experience — cutting abandonment rates from over 40% to under 15%, dropping manual application reviews from 80%+ to under 10%, and turning their digital banking app into their biggest "branch," with members logging in an average of 27+ times a month.

The conversation covers:

• Why digital banking has become the largest "branch" for credit unions — and what that means for member experience
• How removing friction (like driver's license requirements) transformed account opening conversion
• The case for shipping an MVP fast and iterating based on real user feedback
• Why the hardest part of modernization is people and mindset, not technology
• Balancing fraud prevention with a seamless member experience
• Platform engineering principles — treating your internal platform as a product
• Driving member engagement and activation after account opening
• Practical advice for credit union and community bank leaders starting their own modernization journey

Whether you're a technology leader at a credit union, community bank, or fintech, this episode offers a real-world playbook for modernizing legacy systems without losing the trust that makes community financial institutions special.

Connect with Eddie Sorrell on LinkedIn or learn more at ukcreditunion.org. Connect with Justin Billig and Joe Kerstanoff to learn more about Tensure's platform engineering work with financial institutions.

If you found this valuable, subscribe or follow for future episodes.

00:00 Meet Eddie Sorrell
02:17 Digital Banking As Your Biggest Branch
03:54 Why Modernization Matters
08:13 Fixing Account Opening
17:11 MVPs, Integrations & Legacy Systems
26:39 Brokering Partnerships
27:11 Art of Possible Mindset
31:07 Modernization as Change
36:43 Friction Versus Fraud
39:59 Key Takeaways

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to a platform for modern finance. I'm your host, Logan Lyles. I am joined today by Justin Billig and Joe Kersinoff, as usual, here on the show. Today's conversation is with Eddie Sorell, CIO at UK Credit Union. A few quick intros. Justin is the CEO and co-founder of Tensure, a cloud and platform engineering consultancy that helps financial services and fintech org's modernize software delivery through internal development platforms, cloud infrastructure, and developer experience initiatives. Joe is the director of platform engineering at Tensure, where he and his team are helping financial services and fintech org's design and scale internal development developer platforms that improve developer productivity while maintaining security and compliance. As we mentioned, Eddie Sorrell, CIO at UK Credit Union. Eddie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Logan. Awesome. Well, we're going to be talking about today what it really takes to modernize digital banking, especially in a credit union environment, which is why you're joining us on the show today. On the surface, you know, members want simple things. They want things like opening an account quickly, which we're going to talk about a good bit today, getting a digital card, moving money, receiving insights. And they also want to trust that their financial institution is protecting them at the same time. Before we get into today's conversation, Eddie, maybe give us just a little bit of context on the work that you're doing and UK Credit Union for context for listeners today.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Yeah, sure. Hello, everyone. Again, Eddie Sorel, CIO at UK Credit Union. I have the opportunity to lead digital banking, IT, App Develop, Cybersecurity, and Project Management. We've been serving Lexington, Kentucky for about 88 years. And we're really looking to grow across the state because that's mostly been focused in the Fayette County area around University of Kentucky. And so we're calling that initiative Grow Big Blue. And we're doing a lot of first. We actually just merged a credit union in Edgewood, Kentucky, right down the street. And so it's really a fun time to be in the seat. My focus right now is really to modernize our digital banking experience for the modern day consumer.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Awesome. I love that. Well, Eddie, uh, maybe we could start with you. I've heard you say in uh recent conversations that digital banking is now the largest quote unquote branch for UK credit union. Um, what does that mean for how you think about the member experience with that being your you know your quote unquote largest branch today?

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Yeah, when you think about what a branch is, it's where people come to bank. And so when we think about that, um, digital banking by far is our our largest branch. So we're open 24-7, and it's basically a branch um in your in your back pocket. So I think about you know, the mom at the end of the day, she's been busy, uh, she's probably helped with dinner, make dinner, she's putting the kids to bed, and she wants to move money, create an account. Mom, mom doesn't want to have to get up to go to the purse. She doesn't want to be inconvenienced. She maybe has five to ten minutes to do her banking. And so we really need to be thinking about that because that's the members that we serve today. And what keeps me up a little bit, you know, about that is that mom's comparing us to the best digital experience she's having that day. So the Amazon type experience, not necessarily the other credit union down the street.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah, for sure. We moved recently from a large a larger bank to a smaller bank ourselves. And I I noticed the difference in the digital experience going from that big, you know, big national branded bank down into a smaller bank. And I noticed the friction that was caused in some of the lack of tooling that they had. And so I could imagine that's a thing you're thinking about all the time. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Well, um, Justin, you know, from an executive perspective, why do you think regional banks and and credit unions are under so much pressure to modernize? I mean, you kind of touched on it right there. They're being compared to the experience at larger banks, but also uh, as Eddie mentioned, they the best digital experience they had that day, whether that's placing a pickup order at Target or placing an order on Amazon or DoorDash. Um, talk to us about, you know, um where you see the pressure um for teams in financial services, specifically those sitting in seats, much like Eddie's, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yeah. I think you you said it best. They're not just comparing you to other banks. They're comparing you to Amazon, they're comparing you to Target. To uh I was listening to someone talk about uh pizza ordering the other day, and they said Domino's pizza has one of the best online ordering components to them. And you know, that's the main reason why we consistently order from Domino's because it's just so easy to order pizza from there. Uh and it's low friction. And so I think that is the struggle that credit unions and and maybe regional banks have is the expectation is so very high. It's gone past the point of like the digital experience is is something that's unique. It's now it's expected across the board for for everyone, for every business. And you know, oftentimes uh smaller banks or credit unions uh uh have relied almost exclusively on in-branch experience to be a differentiator, and you can't anymore. And and especially as uh younger depositors are moving in, they have that expectation. You know, I think of my son who just graduated high school, he did everything, he does everything online. Like the the idea of going to the branch is foreign to him, and so it becomes an interesting thing that executives have to do about growth, about retention, about engagement. Those are the the critical factors I think they're thinking of.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

And what we talk about quite a bit is um we're here to expand on the experience that uh say a member gets in branch, but it needs to be omnichannel. So if you want to do all your banking within a retail traditional branch, excellent service. If you want to phone in and take care of business, excellent service. We need to do the same thing on the on the digital side. So really meet the members um where they are and provide excellent service across all three of those channels.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, for sure. It's it's um, it is still a differentiator, I think, for a credit union of having that really great um in-branch experience, having the ability to like call in and and have someone answer the phone right away. It's still a differentiator. But if you don't meet that other expectation, that differentiator doesn't may not matter. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Uh Eddie, have you seen that that needs to be that that has had to be kind of a mindset shift from not, you know, discounting the in-branch experience as Justin was saying, but making that digital experience as important or even more so than than the in-branch, as you've kind of had to, you know, maybe there's some mindset shift that has to change there internally. Have you what's been kind of the conversation there?

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Yeah, I think I think really it's it is a bit of mindset shift because it's always worked this way, right? Just you know, build a new branch, go into a market, make it happen, it works. And traditionally it does work. So, but we talk about our biggest branch being digital. That's one thing to say that. What we have to do is show it. So show all the trans transactions that are happening, uh, show all the self-service that's happening there so that we can have the conversation, say if it is our biggest branch and the amount of investment we put into our traditional branches, what would that look like if we invested that into the digital experience? So a lot of that is more show and tell, um, show the transactions happening, uh, show the the value of digital banking and in the cost of those transactions versus in branch to work to get the mindset shift and to um really broker the uh more investment into digital banking.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

I like that approach of kind of looking at the data and showing that to the team and saying this is why this this really matters. Just look at the volume, look at the trends, right? Um, of our new uh account openers. Speaking of account opening, Eddie, you and I were talking a few weeks back about uh a recent initiative there at UK Credit Union about the account opening experience. Um, tell folks for context, kind of what was that initiative, why was it important, and then let's dig into, you know, kind of what were the learnings from that.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

Sure. When I had the opportunity to lead digital banking for the organization, we had to, you know, take a look at the the member experience. And so it was really what are the friction points? And you can do a lot of research and studies, but at the end of the day, we're all consumers. So just look at the app and go through the flow. And so account opening is our digital front door. And so when it's slow or clunky, it's not a good experience. You likely you don't get the member. And so what we were looking at was a 10 to 15 minute online account opening experience that had a lot of friction. So we set out with some some key targets that we wanted to solve for. We wanted um time under five minutes for account opening. Uh, we wanted the manual application reviews um to go down to under 10%. The manual application reviews was above 80 plus percent across our operations. We wanted support time cut by 50%, and we wanted that omni-channel consistent consistency. So um, if I'm completing an application on a mobile phone and I want to complete it on my computer later, or if I want to go in branch to complete that, I have that omni-channel um experience. And so one of the big drivers of uh making this process more streamlined and removing a lot of friction was requiring, and it's not the only thing, but requiring a driver's license to open account. So let's go back to mom. Purse is upstairs, right? Yeah. She wants the open account, she sees this great product, she has she sees a high yield savings account, she wants to put some money in there and earn some good interest, but the purse is upstairs. I don't know that she's going to get up and make that happen. So we were seeing a significant amount of abandonment rates, um, abandonment over 40% in the application process. So again, we're failing at the front door. Yep. And um, that was one of the the bigger shifters is looking at technology to help validate who the person is versus the manual processes that we uh previously had in place. Again, they were working, but when we look at the data, we're losing 40% of the opportunity. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

That's a that's a significant amount. That's a significant amount. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Having that observability layer there is huge, so you know like where you get your biggest bang for your buck to to attack those problems. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Are there other are there other aspects of the account opening process that you guys track and manage or or or is it mostly just abandonment rate?

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Abandonment rate, um time to completion, and then a lot of the back-end efficiencies on on how many we're having to manually look at to escalate, um, funding, you know, so is funding happening at online account opening. So those are some of the other areas that we're looking at as well. And so what we're seeing um after, you know, kind of modifying this online account opening process is that our manual review process is under um 10%. Uh the majority of the accounts are being being funded. So I think we're 75% above on account funding there at account opening. Our abandonment rate has been dropped to well below, I'm gonna say below 15% now, I think, or so maybe even maybe even more. So that's significant. So what that what you see there is you see member growth. Yeah. You see more accounts.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Yeah, that's awesome. Does the does the M branch teller do they have a similar experience of opening an account now that a person does on their own?

SPEAKER_03 11:51

It's the same experience. Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah. That's that's why I talk about the omnichannel experience. It's all the the very same experience. And so the amount of time the tellers now are spending um opening an account is so much less. So instead of spending 30 minutes with a member opening their account, they're actually spending that 30 minutes. We still want the time with the member, but it's consulting with the member, it's understanding what their needs are, and and that's so very valuable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

It's more than just paperwork. That's right. Like I'm learning about who you are and what you're doing and what your goals are.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

That's really interesting, you guys. Eddie, what I hear there from that story is that by setting out to enhance the digital experience, you actually came full circle and started improving the in-branch experience, which is, as we were talking about a few minutes ago, a big differentiator. It can't be the only differentiator, as we were talking about for those reasons, but it kind of came full circle. Justin, what comes to mind for you and why, you know, this is such a high value area for financial and financial institutions to start modernizing? There's so many things that they could modernize that they could, you know, yeah, I'm sure you guys at Tenture C organizations, you know, go through modernization and technology uh projects, but picking the right ones that are the highest value are so important, right?

unknown 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

I mean, if the digital platform is your biggest branch, then account opening is your front door. That's right. And if it's if it's not inviting, people are going to go there and they're going to turn around and leave. And so it's it's the first experience of how is the rest of interacting with this organization, with this credit union, how how is it going to be in the future? And it sets the stage of, well, if this isn't great, if this is if I don't have a high sense of trust or a high sense of um a great experience, I'm I'm then going to assume every other experience is similar to that. And and it might drive frustration, it might not drive as much engagement. But if it if it's just easy, then I'm just going to uh I'm going to just assume that the rest of the experiences are are the similar.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Yeah, and that's really we we set out to just let's make banking easy. And um I like again it helps when we focus first on the member experience. It was easy to have the conversation, we need to fix online uh account opening. And it and again, when as you do that, the the downstream benefits that you have, like I said, in branch with the tellers, it's it's that's absolutely phenomenal. We didn't necessarily know that we were going to see that, but it it just helps to support our mission. We're here to help the members make money and save money. And so now you've got that 15, that 30 minutes back to really build that relationship and maybe uh provide additional insights they didn't know uh they needed or provide additional value that they didn't know they needed because it just came into um you know open open a simple checking account.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, and I bet too with the digital experience, you have a lot better data tracking capabilities versus just anecdotal in the branch, right? You can track, like you said, the abandonment rate, the funding rate, the manual review versus before you were just sort of going based off of what you know the the branch, the branch leadership was was giving back from an anecdotal standpoint.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

What's surprising how how we can manage organizations sometimes based on think and feel.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

And in the data, I was I was listening to another podcast. I think um we talk about digital modernization, which is making decisions based on on data and how mature financial organizations could be. 13% of FIs are considered digitally mature, which they're making data-driven decisions. And so I talked to my senior team about team, if we can be part of that 13%, we're like we're likely going to be 5x profitable and we're gonna be able to 5x grow at least.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yeah. And it drives um confidence in the investment, right? I've I've put all of this effort, I've put all this organizational capital, I've put all this people capital into this, and I can prove that there is a uh a benefit.

unknown 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

I love that line you said earlier, Eddie, of making banking easy. And it reminds me of when I was in journalism school, I was in a design class, and we had this uh we had this assignment to look at magazines, newspapers. I'm dating myself a little bit that there were actually newspapers on the floor, and you guys are gonna chuckle me as well. But and it was like pick out three designs that you really like and three that are that are really bad. And guess what? It was way easier to pick out the bad ones. And I learned this principle is that good design is pretty much invisible because it it feels natural. And same thing with the user experience. Um, it feels easy, right? When it's a bad experience, it stands out in our mind. When it's good, it's just like, oh, this is the way that things are supposed to be. Now, that compared to the complexities on the back end in a financial institution, um, some of the roadblocks, um, some technical, some legacy uh applications, some legacy mindset thinking in financial services, Eddie, you and I have talked about before that in order to get to the simple, there's some complexity on the back end. What are some of the things that um you guys found that you thought maybe would be easier, but were a longer uh road to get there to actually make them easy and make them seem so easy and pretty much invisible to the users?

SPEAKER_03 17:11

Sure. When the member sees a button, we see an integration project. Let's be honest. Yeah, yeah. Um let's take um, you know, let's take maybe a digital issuance um as an example. As a member, I want to complete online account opening and I want to be able to use my card. I want to use that debit card immediately. Um, I want to be able to provision that to my wallet and and go use it. Um it's 2026, you'll be able to do that, right? And and we can, um, but it's it's rather complex. You've got the card processors involved, you've got your core involved, you got your digital banking involved, and you likely have a fintech partner involved as well. So you have all these integration points that have to work seamlessly for that digital um car to show up in the wallet and actually work when they go to uh to get gas.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's interesting living in the tech world where something may seem so simple, but we know there's probably 80 steps to make it happen. And somebody spent a late night uh frustrated at their computer because it wasn't working the first time they dragged it.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yes, yes. I remember taking a picture to deposit a check for the first time and thinking like this is wild. Yeah, that's right to go anywhere. This is great. And then I found out the first implementation at my bank of that, like a human being just typed, like looked at the pictures, typed everything in, and that's how it finally got into the account. Oh wow. Like, so they eventually got around to like building that into their platform, but like it was manual uh for the first uh MVP. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

And and you say MVP, and I think that's so important. I think a lot of financial institutions are waiting for that perfect moment or for it to be all there. But if you think about the member experience, that member experience was excellent. Now you had a team on the back end that's working really hard to get in here. But sometimes that's okay, right? It's minimally viable, the member experience is great, and then you figure out the back end process a bit later. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah, Joe, I I love that you bring up uh that experience there. I remember when, you know, mobile deposit with uh taking a picture of the check. I'm I'm waiting for when you can do that with cash, you know, any thing that you can credit union, let me know. Um, because that'll definitely make me move over. Um, but Joe, I I'm curious, um, kind of two things jumping off of what you said there. What do you think is the importance of kind of getting started um with uh an MVP um with these sorts of projects? And also uh I'm curious what this uh kind of brings to light for you on the importance of platform thinking and integration architecture. I mean, integration was one of the first things out of Eddie's mouth as we started talking about, you know, some of the complexity in order to getting to that making banking easy for their members at UK Credit Union.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah, for for that simple like uh opening of an account, there's probably a myriad of systems behind that that all have to be talking um in a standard way. And you know, a platform is what uh enables that that onboarding experience. So when we have new integrations, there's a paved road and we don't have to solve the same problems every time when we integrate something new. Um but starting that MVP, and you know, I like to you know talk about those metrics first and the business outcomes and tie the projects to those business outcomes and that like executives are way more bought in at that point, and like they become champions of getting this platform in place. Um and they they become like our best partner because you know they want it to happen at that point, because they see the value, they see what they're gonna get at the end of the these projects, and we have the metrics to back it up and pivot along the way. So we can with an MVP, we can prove out that our assumptions are or the data, what it's telling us, and then say, Yep, we need to invest more here, here, and here. We need to change this, and then we'll be good, and start standardizing those golden paths to make developers' lives really easy when they want to take advantage of the platform.

unknown 21:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah. I think I think too, um, you know, I've been in IT for a long time, I've built a fair amount of software, and there's there is an expectation that at the beginning of maybe I know it, maybe I know what needs to be done. And we sometimes discount the learning that we can get from putting something in in a user's hands very quickly. And so having that experience, like you were talking about, like, well, you know, this is causing more work for us to take a picture of the check and manually all enter it in. Uh, but uh does the user like it? Are they actually going to use it? Should I continue to be investing into this thing? Um, I think it there's a huge amount of learning and value that you get from that.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

I love I love how you say that because it's nothing like putting it in the hands of the user. I think sometimes when we're guessing we we over over engineer things. Yes. So we we we try to make it look really great or or or sexy, but some of the best innovation is boring, let's be honest. You know, just keeping it very simple, making it boring. So um I we talk about that quite a bit, especially as we're focused on our member personas. Let's not try to act like we know what the 20-year-old wants. So let's actually talk to them, let's get it in their hands and and let's build the solutions that matter to them. And let's not guess about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah. Well, too, I think technology professionals, it's our desire to build the big thing. Yeah. Right. It's our desire to build towards the end. And there's a lot of steps in between here and the end. And I think uh because it's exciting to build, we just want to go all the way. And and so there's a there's wisdom in in reigning ourselves in at times. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Eddie, have you found that to be true for your team a little bit of needing to kind of pull back, take one step at a time, not you know, build towards the the the end and what you have in your mind as uh as a team, as Justin was describing there?

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yeah, I think the one of the opportunities I've had in serving the credit union is is uh approaching things in a different way. Maybe things that I was doing in other industries. We talk about just iterative development, looking at things that are iteration. And so a lot of times we'll see that we're we're hanging on to value and we're waiting to deliver it to the members because the whole package isn't done yet. And I'll have the conversation with the team. It's like, team, is this incrementally better than what we have right now? Everybody's like, yeah, absolutely. It's like, well, let's deliver it and then let's make it better a month later. And so just getting that value out the door. And the the benefit of that is you're get we're getting it in the hands of the users, so we're going to get some really good feedback too. And and so also working on that mindset that feedback is good. Feedback is valuable, and it's it's not um, you got to separate you know the do from the who. It's not about you. So if you get feedback and you built the thing, it's not it's not about you, it's just about the behavior of the thing you built. So let's take that feedback and let's see if we can do something with it. But it's not an attack on you as a developer.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yeah, yeah, agreed.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

I love both of those benefits that you just laid out there, Eddie, of of shipping a little bit quicker, more uh maybe a little sooner than than when you think uh you're you're ready. Um, one of the other things that um, Eddie, I've heard you talk about is that as we've touched on here, that that one simple button, as Joe mentioned earlier, there's so many integrations that the three of you know are going on in the back end um wherever you're at. The other thing that makes it tough, specifically for technology leaders like yourself in financial services, is that there's a lot of systems, and some of those are pretty legacy, some of them may be outdated in certain ways. You're looking at your team and how can we leverage AI and these new fintech platforms at the same time? You've got some legacy systems and you're trying to get them all talking together. What have been some of the key challenges and and learnings in working through some of those for you guys and working with some legacy uh systems? We'll talk about legacy mindsets uh here in a bit, but let's talk about the tech first and we'll get to the people.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Sure. Uh a lot of these systems were built when it, let's be honest, when integration wasn't wasn't the point. And so as things are modernized, we we find ourselves working with partners to kind of refactor what was it's always worked well. And in silo, it still works well. So we've got to get credit, give credit where credit is due. It still works um, you know, to a point. So the constraint isn't necessarily that that bad. It's just that the the world has changed. We're more real-time now. And so we're just finding most of the friction in the difficulty. It's it's actually in the seams, it's in the handoffs. It's just those those integration points that we spend so much time trying uh you know to get right. The industry is is is is moving forward, um, but uh a lot of it is in the the handoff and the seams. That's that's where we we seem to struggle still. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

But the glue between like all the systems is like where we spend most of our time.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

It it is. And I think too in the in the banking world, more so than a lot of other uh industries, there there are very clear delineations between like what the bank does, what the payment processor does, what the fintech company does. And so you just have this naturally highly integrated distributed solution for a user. And you're often not a control of a lot of those things, but you you bear the brunt of this isn't working, but it's outside of your control as as the as the credit union.

unknown 26:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Yeah, we find ourselves advocating with our partners. One, you know, partner relationships are so so very important. Um, but to put ourselves out there as as early adopters, let us let us help, let us, let's see what we can do to help, you know, build this thing, to share the potential benefit of of that investment. If they're investing us and to to solve this challenge, not only will it help us as an organization, potentially give them something that they can sell to the rest of uh the FIs out there. So we really work hard to try to broker relationships to get everyone to to work to work better together.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Yeah. For any of us that have been in technology for uh any number of years, we know it all comes down to people, process, and technology. And so let's talk a little bit about the people front. Uh Eddie, one of the things I I've heard you talk about is this mindset shift towards the the art of possible um with your team. So talking a little bit about you know the technology there in shifting from not from, but um the use cases of some of the legacy technology that maybe wasn't built for today's situation. There are some mindsets that um you know, technology teams and the financial institutions they're a part of may have that need to shift as well. What has that looked like for you guys? And what are your some some of the conversations with some of your peers around this idea of kind of shifting towards this art of possible mindset, even when you're dealing with some legacy technology, some uphill battles to make things easy for your members, um, as well as compliance and regulation and all the things that you have to deal with on your side as well.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

Yeah, the the old process still technically works is the most expensive conversation in the building. So the the hardest part is not the technology. When something is clearly broken, everybody wants it to be fixed. Um, but when the old way still works, we find ourselves really having to spend a lot of time show and tell. You know, um, you know, many times I talked about that online account opening. Our our team members became numb to that 10 to 15 minute account opening process. It didn't seem that slow to them. It still technically worked. The the game changer there is showing them what it could look like. Hey, well, look at this experience over here. Oh, I like that. Hey, we we can do that, we can do that too. Um, you know, having a conversation with our risk and fraud team about, well, technically it still works. We we need this driver's license to identify, you know, the person, and that has worked. But to show where technology can not only help it faster, but it can help actually help to reduce fraud. You know, it has more data points that you're able to actually look at. So a lot of that comes to you know, show and tell and um and finding solutions out there and just bringing it to the team and saying, look, what do we think about this? Imagine if we could provide that to our members. So um I found myself having a lot of difficulty trying to sell it when you don't have something to show for it. And so a lot of times it's just bringing other consumer products and saying, what if what if this translated into our online account open experience? What if this translated into our onboarding experience to get the buy-in so people can actually see what's there? Because sometimes it's hard to imagine that art a possible when you haven't seen seen it before.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah, for sure. That is uh go again back to the value of that MVP, right? Show it to them quicker so they can see and and get excited themselves. Because, you know, at technology professionals, I think of us as the the consummate problem solvers. And and we see the problem before us and we say, Oh, I well, we can fix that. Oh, we can, yeah, we can fix that. And so I may have been sitting in a of, you know, hey, this is how we did it before, but then I see the the problem ahead of me and I go, oh, I want to go solve that problem now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

I think from from our seats, we look at it it's like everything's possible. Yeah, right. Yes. But but working with our our team members, um, you know, we've got to help them them see that. We're like, hey, it's just it's just code. We can do we can surely we can do this. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Famous last words, it's just code. It's just code. Yeah, I I like what you were saying there, Eddie, about um showing the benefit to the other stakeholders within the organization, right? Going to risk and fraud and saying this is what this could mean here, going to, you know, maybe the member experience team and showing them that benefit um and speaking the language of the different leaders that you're, you know, um getting buy-in with internally. Um, Justin, what do you think other CIOs, other tech leaders like Eddie should be thinking about um when it comes to viewing this sort of modernization as an organizational change effort rather than just a quote unquote technology project? What are some of the things you think you would arm them with, either from Eddie's experience or from some of the other leaders that you guys are working with at Tensure?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, I I always um I've I've built my career on the the thought process that um technology for the sake of technology ultimately is a failure. Because in the end, technology should be solving a business problem. And so I what thing that was really exciting is when you talked about how you looked at abandonment rate and how long it took to open an account, how long it took to get funded, you know, all that stuff. Ultimately technology is a tool to solve a business problem. And and that's how we should be thinking as executives in technology, but also executives in business when we're thinking about organizational change and how can technology enable that. And oftentimes we look at modernization as this really huge, gigantic effort that needs to happen. But in reality, we can take uh small snippets of friction, small snippets of problem, and attack that and say, okay, we've modernized this, uh now let's let's take a look at the next step, the next step, the next step, the a different problem. And so, you know, technology there's a give and take with change in an organization when it comes to technology. Right. We can't implement a piece of technology and have it work the way we do today, but we also have to agree that the way we do things today is gonna have to change uh to meet the technology too. Because why implement it if we're not gonna change because then it's just you know we've put a we've put a new facade on an old problem.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Well, and and I'm glad you said that because we we've had that experience before. A lot of times we um, you know, as leaders, sometimes you want to hit that easy button and you you think that let's just bring that new tech tech in. And and you know, our organization has experienced that too. It's like, let's, let's, let's bring this new technology and it has a lot of promise, but that promise is not met unless you're willing to take the platform up on the best practices and you change your back-end process. We've seen we've seen that you know before. And so that's where the work is. Um, and and so a lot of times now when we're evaluating new solutions and those type of things, or trying to identify and separate, say, signal from noise, I'm challenging our teams to say, but are we making the most out of the solution that we have? Um, and so let's exhaust that first. And a lot of times what we find is we haven't been willing to change our ways of thinking and our back-end processes to be at best practice for how we could achieve the results that say that platform promised to begin with.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

Um that's where the work lies.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yeah. But it's it's understandable. It's a challenge to get over to overcome, but it's understandable, understandable in the financial services industry because very highly regulated, you know, uh a little bit of uh change adverse at times because of regulatory requirements, security requirements, trust in in the end user. I mean, banking is probably the thing that affects people the most that they don't even think about. So that's a good way to put it.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Um we're talking a little bit about kind of historical patterns of approach organizationally. Joe, I'm curious what you've kind of been thinking about as you think about change, um uh change management and projects like this, where repeatable patterns and golden paths, like you guys talk about a lot at Tensure, um, help technology leaders kind of make this change, both in the um in the um the team and the people side as well as the technology side.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Yeah, I think um something Eddie already said was like it's not really a technology problem, it's a more of a culture problem of like getting everybody on the same board on the same page and attacking those um those requirements at a platform level so that once a problem is solved, it's solved for everyone. So like a plat, a good platform kind of takes in and you know, if it can handle 80%, like 60 to 80 percent of like normal business processes and streamline all of that, like you you've and you you know when you use that platform, like you're compliant and it's easy, and you know like how to implement you know that you know when you get audited, it's gonna be fine because everything in the platform was built to spec, to be built towards those compliance um requirements that just streamlines everything and makes the development teams faster and a more able to iterate more quickly and get things out to users and get start getting that feedback and that business value. The other thing that a good platform sort of enables is some of those like metrics, so like golden signals of like maybe opening an account, like abandonment rates and all of that. Like you can track that over time and and you know, you can pinpoint like oh, we changed this and abandonment rate went up. So we need to maybe rethink that that feature just that just went out. So you get like benefits of more data and uh of a safe golden path for your developers to use to build value.

unknown 36:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

I love that. Well, Eddie, we've talked a little bit about trust, um, fraud, uh protecting against that um here in the last few minutes. So I I'd love to hear, you know, we've talked a lot about balancing, you know, the complexities in the back end with trying to make it easy for members on the front end. Um, how about this balancing act of protecting members um and protecting the credit union from fraud while still making the experience um as seamless, as efficient as possible? What have been some of the learnings from this project on yet another balancing act that you and the team had to had to manage and other tech leaders, I'm sure, can relate to?

SPEAKER_03 37:20

Yeah, we're still digging into that. And we talk about we talk about friction and friction um in itself, it's not bad. It friction needs to be applied where it needs to be applied. And so historically, everybody had to fill out the long form, everybody had to wait in line. So you you're literally penalizing them 99% to go after that 1% bad actor. And and we're still there in in some some cases. And so what we're really trying to work on is more real-time behavioral type of analytics so that we can provide the the friction and the step-ups only where necessary. Yeah. Um, you know, so the Joe, he's moving forward and he's doing his banking, he's good to go. But then if there's a bad actor, we're kind of stopping them and we're requesting that additional uh, say, authentication and things like that. I think that's that's the important part is applying the friction only when necessary and not penalizing the 99%.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

I think that's a great way to put it. Joe, to kind of come back to the the platform and architecture standpoint from your perspective, I'm curious some of the things that you think about you know need to be true for a financial institution to move towards this sort of real-time decisioning and things like Eddie was talking about.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah, that's a good question. Um, like I think trust in the platform like um it goes a long way. Um, but I also think like having those standards in place of um like this is how we deploy software, this is how uh our pipelines work, this is how security scans run, and this is these are the real-time monitoring tools that we use. Like not having standards leads to unsecure deployments, like full stop. Like if you don't have those standards in place or um you're doing those workarounds, like workarounds aren't done out of maliciousness, they're done because things are slow, uh, they don't know what the requirements are, and they just need to get their work, their work done, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Um, so having those standards in place, I think, is huge to enable that um that that trust in the platform.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Yeah, for sure. I think too it it provides um trust from the executives, but it also provides trust to the technology professionals and and it lets them push push the to the edge of technology because I don't have to worry about am I doing this incorrect, am I exposing the organization? Am I, you know, is someone gonna come back and question why I've done something because the platform is there and it sort of it protects me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

You guys, this has been fantastic. We're gonna get to some some closing thoughts and some takeaways for technology leaders listening to this. Before we get to that, though, I've got uh a question for each of you around getting members to use what you actually build, right? Because if we're problem solvers in the tech space, we want to make sure that we're solving problems and people are feeling those solutions, right? Otherwise, you know, what really is it worth? And so, Eddie, I'm curious to continue pulling on this thread of the account opening uh initiative after you've guys you guys have made it easier for members to join. How are you thinking about activation and helping members get more value from digital banking? Because as Justin was saying, kind of at the top of the episode, you have one good experience or bad experience, for better or for worse. That's what you start to expect. And so now you've kind of raised the bar and you need to continue meeting that bar. How do you guys think about that at UK Credit Union at this point?

SPEAKER_03 40:54

Yeah, now that we're we've improved on the online account opening, we'll still talk about hey, that's just that's just vanity getting an account. Now, now's where the engagement starts. They're like, We were doing so well here, but like vanity, been there, done that. So now it's all about engagement, right? You you have the member. Um, so how do you keep them, how do you keep them engaged? And so we really do look at a lot of data points on that. You know, um, we're we're focused on engagement through through onboarding. And so continuing to uh communicate to the member, again, omnichannel. So in-app pushes, pop-ups, um email campaigns that deliver value to drive that engagement. And I'm happy to say what we're seeing is on average our our our user base, um, we're we're around, I think, active users. There's probably between 75,000 and 80,000 members on average are logging in over 27 times a month. So now that's say, hey, that's an engaged user. Oh wow. And so so with that, it's what are what's the products? Are we getting more products in household and those type of things? And so we we don't we again online account opening, it's it's kind of vanity if it's just sitting there. If it's just sitting there, it's not providing value to the member, it's not providing uh value uh to the credit union. So education, push, um, gamification is what we're seeing, seems to work. Oh, yeah. Um, you know, folks like to to to you know, as you as you log into digital, how can you make the most of it? Do you have steps that you need to complete? Uh things like that. People like to uh move forward with the you know check boxes. And so what we've done there is with onboarding is kind of to to not only do say next best product, but um, you know, here's how you automatically switch over your direct deposit, here's how you manage your subscriptions. So some of this is just clicking through checkboxes to get the most out of your digital platform. And uh that's been um it's new to us, so we're just about a quarter in on some of those things, but we're seeing some significant um uh value being delivered to the members, and we're seeing it in the engagement side.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

I I you just mentioned like uh the subscriptions. I think that's probably a huge benefit because you know there's subscription sprawl everywhere. Oh gosh, yes. Yeah. And so being able to help help a member manage that type of thing, it becomes a scenario in which I bet there was a point in time where um people only interacted with the bank when there was a problem, right? The bank sort of lived in autopilot, the credit union, I you know, I lived in autopilot with my credit union or my accounts until there was a problem, then I had to go interact with them, not realizing all the benefit that uh the credit union can bring to a member's life. You know, hey, you've got a lot of money sitting here, you might be able to move it to a money market account, or it's time to engage to a CD. How can you reduce the complexity of that? And and now I see I'm not just interacting when there's an issue, I'm actually getting a benefit from it.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Yes. And I think that's we're not there yet, but that's where we're really trying to change the shift of not looking at the credit union or digital banking as um a place that you go to do something, but a place that actually does something for you. So that's where we we want to take advantage of that opportunity. We have you engaged. Logging in 27 plus times a month, how can we deliver that value to you?

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Yeah. Yeah. And like to have like value that you provide is what drives that engagement. And you know, doing that due diligence of talking to your user base and your customers of saying, like, what do you need? What are what are you interested in? What kind of products would fit for your needs and getting that feedback throughout the whole process of the digital platform is huge. And that gamification is also huge. Like we talk about that even with internal developer pro uh platforms because developers are just the same as any other user.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Um they they're gonna use it if it solves their problems, if it makes their lives easier, they're gonna use the platform. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

So that's all that I love that. Justin, you were talking a little bit earlier about the the value of you know shipping sooner, as Eddie was saying, hey, is this uh iter you know, an iteration better than what they're experiencing uh today? On the flip side of that, there's a risk in um building things that you know the end user, the end customer doesn't actually adopt. Um, do you think that that that mindset shift of you know shipping a little sooner and that that feedback loop is one of the most important things to kind of avoid that risk? Or what else would you say um for the teams building these things they can do to avoid building stuff that doesn't actually end up solving a problem?

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Yeah. Uh early in my career, I worked at a um large automotive manufacturer and they had uh a phrase that they would say all the time, go and see. Right. So you you build something and then you have to go and see how it's actually working, how it's actually being used. Go and see uh how this team member is interacting with whatever, whatever they're interacting with. And it becomes massively important because you know, the technology professionals often live in a bubble, you know, in the bubble on their IT floor in their IT building. And, you know, we've been told this is how things work, and then we have the idea of like, hey, what does good look like? If I was using it, this is how I would want to use it. But I'm often not the greatest user. Um and so I think it is important to, from a digital capabilities perspective, um, to ensure that as you're building, you're hearing what your members are saying, you're hearing what your team members are saying. Because if you build something and it it's great and it's awesome, it's the it's a it's built on the best platform, it's the shiniest thing, but no one's using it, then you've you've really just wasted your time and your effort and and your your investment.

unknown 46:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

I love that phrase, go and see. That's a fantastic one, I think, for a lot of uh leaders to want to instill in their team, Justin. And speaking of that, we'll we want to round it out with each of you some advice for the the technology leaders listening to the show today. Um, Joe, maybe we could come back to you and kind of you were looking internally about the developer experience uh internally as much as the customer experience and how those kind of mirror each other. Curious, looking internally, what do you think is one platform engineering principle that uh teams like Eddie should keep in mind as they modernize the member facing experiences externally?

SPEAKER_01 47:17

That's a great question. Um, I think one of the most important um paradigms in platform engineering is the platform as a product. Um, if you treat your platforms as a product for your developers to build products of their own with, um you'll automatically sort of like get in the mindset of I need I need this feedback, I need to talk to the developers or they're using my platform, I need to instrument and make sure I have like those golden signals, whatever that may be for that part of the platform, um, to know how things are being used, how things are affecting business value. Because if you can, you know, like show a dashboard of like, here's the changes we made, and here's the business value that we realized because of these changes, like you'll get more funding, you'll get more adoption, um, and you'll you'll just your platform will start building itself as more people and developers will be like, oh, well, I just need to add something to the platform instead of ask, you know, for a feature. I'll just build it myself and commit back to uh my my my internal platform. So that's kind of where we want to get teams to is like adopting, but also helping grow the platform as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Justin, how about for you? What would be some of your final thoughts for leaders listening to this? Um, where they're in a position like Yeti, they're trying to uh serve their their members, but they're trying to also internally prove value quickly with these sorts of projects and initiatives. Um, what are some of the things that you'd recommend to them to get started quickly, but also to uh, as I said there, prove value as quickly as possible with these sorts of initiatives?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Yeah. Um obviously focusing on the high friction points within your organization, uh, how you're servicing your customers, you know, where where do your customers um have problems? Where are they frustrated? You know, where do they look at this and kind of roll their eyes when they have to do something? That's that's where you start. And then realize that like uh uh incremental solving of problems is better than you know, sort of putting the finished product at the end. Um, getting that feedback sooner will will drive both internal and external behavior change.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

Eddie, uh last question to you as we rounded out today. You know, what advice would you give to other technology leaders in credit unions and mid-market financial institutions similar uh to yours that are sitting uh listening to this saying, yes, I want to modernize. I've got you know 10 different projects, just like this account opening project that you guys just went through at UK Credit Union, but they feel constrained either by legacy systems, limited resources, um, and all the other challenges we were talking about earlier. What would be some of your advice to them based on your team's recent experience?

SPEAKER_03 50:11

You start somewhere, you know. I think to Justin, the focus on the member experience, identify the friction, and start, start somewhere. The situation's never going to be perfect, so you gotta you gotta start. Um budget um energy for change management. The technology is the easy part, the hard part is the the people. So so getting the the buy-in. Um not you know, I think that's that's so so very important. And then for credit unions and and financial institutions that are mid-size, we're never gonna outspin the big banks, we're never gonna over-engineer um the neo banks, but what we do have is we have the trust of the member. And so we can move faster than mega banks on a decision. We have more trust than neo banks will ever be able to get for our member. And so use that, identify the friction, pair that with trust, and and get moving, and you'll see you'll see the change and you'll be able to deliver that value to the members, which will be direct value back to your financial institution.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Very well said, Eddie. Well, Justin, Joe, appreciate you guys joining me on the mic. You will be uh with me in future episodes. So uh if you're listening to this and you're not yet connected with Justin or Joe and the Tensure team, uh, I want to encourage you, wherever you're listening, check out the show notes and connect with them on LinkedIn, let them know that um you heard their conversation here on the podcast. Uh speaking of the podcast, if this was valuable for you, if you're wherever you're watching or listening, if you hit subscribe or follow, you'll be sure to be notified when there are future episodes. Eddie, same question to you. If people want to stay connected with you or learn more about what you and the team are doing at UK Credit Union, um, what would be the the best place you want to direct people to?

SPEAKER_03 52:01

Yeah, you can check me out at Eddie Sorrell on LinkedIn or um check out ukcreditunion.org and learn about what we're what we're doing um to uh um serve our fellow Kentuckians.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

I love it. Awesome. Well, all three of you, thank you so much for joining me on the mic. Eddie, thanks for being our special guest today. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

Thank you. My pleasure, and we're gonna be a little bit