Talking Credit Unions from Swoboda Research Centre

EDITION 38: Outcome-driven innovation in credit unions

• Anca Voinea

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Purpose without delivery doesn’t move the needle. This podcast explores some of the key themes emerging from the Swoboda Research Centre - Autumn Conference in Liverpool.

The podcast includes the recording of a conference session featuring Vicky Zuiderent, Jen Lothian and Joss Tasker, who unpacked how credit unions can innovate with confidence, cut through change fatigue, and build products members actually want. 

Jen shares a field-tested approach to risk that turns fear into decisions: break it into impact and probability, separate good risks from bad ones, and run reversible tests in sandboxes before scaling. 

Joss takes us inside a mission-led start-up mindset, where product–market fit is a moving target and distribution matters as much as features. Together, they show how leadership sets the tone—give teams air cover, define exactly what success looks like with the “red wine test,” and cut the project list so people have time and energy to deliver.

We also explore when AI helps and when it harms, and how credit unions can trial modern tech stacks, APIs, and sandboxes, coordinating with peers and vendors.

Talking Credit Unions is a regular podcast dedicated to informing credit union practitioners, leaders, and opinion formers on a variety of industry topics. The podcast is sponsored by the Swoboda Research Centre.

SPEAKER_00:

Over the past few years, credit unions across the UK and Ireland have really started to lean into digital transformation to improve how they work day-to-day or launch new products and services. The recent Soboda Credit Union Conference was all about innovation with speakers from both the credit union and fintech sectors sharing their experiences of driving innovation within their organizations. In one of the sessions of the conference, Vicky's reiterant, Jen Lothian, and George Tasker share tips on how to drive tech innovation, pointing out, among other things, that success needs to be outcome-oriented. Let's listen to their conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

So my name's Vicky Zuderin. I am a risk and compliance consultant. I'm an ex-Fintech founder, but I'm also a board member of Capital Credit Union as well. So I am joined by these two incredible panelists. We really are very lucky to have them with us. We have Joss Tasker and Jen Lothian. So Joss is the CEO and co-founder of Sync Savings, the UK's first dedicated payroll savings provider. Josh's background is in legal compliance and innovation at Monzo and Octopus, and she is passionate about building financial resilience and making savings simple and accessible. Jen has worked for over 25 years across large-scale transformation and innovation in AI and data, initially in the army for a decade, and then 15 years in banking and finance. Jen founded Data Wallet to fundamentally reimagine how data could be accessed and in doing so to remove the barriers for members to access the best products and services. So I think I'm going to start by setting the scene. And Jen, I have teed you up for this, so I'm going to come to you first. How and perhaps more importantly, why do you intentionally build a culture of innovation at Data Wallet?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's it's the same for all organizations. So the only constant in life is change. And so if you stand still, you will be left behind. And I think a lot of the statistics that were shown first thing on this morning kind of talk to some of that. And it doesn't mean that you need to change all the good learnings you've got and everything that works today. It's about continuously adapting, continuously improving, and really leveraging the opportunities that many changes, be it regulatory, technology or people, drive, so that you can continually reimagine what you're offering and continually offer better services to your members. How you do it is another question. I'm going to dissect innovation and change. My background is in a lot of sort of digital and data and technology change. You can't innovate if you can't manage change. So what I've heard a lot today that's been really interesting is when people have tried to implement technology and it's not gone to plan. And so there's some wounds, there's some bruises there. That is not unique to credit unions. I have worked across insurance, um, private equity, investment banking, incredibly well-funded organizations, and they are terrible, terrible at change. Partly because a lot of them are so big, and I've never been so enthusiastic about a sector as the credit union space. But before we even get to the innovation, you have to find a way to get comfortable with change. But a lot of that is getting those basic foundations of understanding risk appetite, understanding what skills you need. If you're an HR director, you're not implementing technology very well because you haven't spent decades doing it. And so it's looking at that whole gambit of the environment you need on a very practical level, getting the foundation right, and then you can really look to innovation.

SPEAKER_02:

Picking up that point then about foundations, uh Josh, um, how does this apply for you at Sync and what does innovation mean for you in your organization?

SPEAKER_04:

We founded the business because we had an idea that we thought was quite innovative and it was based on our mission. So for us, it's really like we are a mission-driven organization, we want to help everyone to save more. And so then it's a question of well, how do we reach as many people as efficiently as possible? And we think that's the payroll angle, is really interesting. As an organization that does not yet actually realistically have product market fit, we have to keep changing until we find it. And I think that's maybe it's some really interesting synergies with the credit union space as well. We're all looking for product market fit at the end of the day, aren't we? We're looking at, and that means we're looking at what product we can can we sell someone that someone wants to buy, and until you found that, you shouldn't stand still. Most startups fail because they don't find product market fit. So I suppose it's that mentality of like, how do we keep changing until we're finding the product that somebody really wants? And we always have to be guided by who we're trying to sell to, what are exactly are that needs, and how do we change our product to meet the needs of the people that are buying it? And so that starts with okay, what is the most effective distribution channel for cash savings? Where are the barriers? I worked really hard to get the regulator to issue the statement that says you can do simplified due diligence, which makes basically means that KYC goes away. That allows all of us to auto-enroll whole organizations to payroll savings and use that language. But I think just having that relentless focus on getting product market fit right is the key from my perspective. And there's loads of things that I want to do, and I hope that everyone else here we can work together on in terms of unlocking barriers to mass adoption of payroll savings, for example, which is my passion where to help us to reach that product market fit. Because as a product, payroll savings doesn't work at scale yet.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure, yeah. And I think what's interesting about what you're saying there is the principles by which both of you actually have built your organizations and built them up is the same as the kind of principles that we're looking to develop here, but it is driven by innovation, right? And it is driven by having that culture. So, in terms of a leadership style, I guess, so change management, Jen, you alluded to change. Like, what do you recommend, or how would you translate that into, I guess, credit union leadership as well? What are the fundamentals of leadership that are needed to create an innovation culture? Joss, do you want to carry on with that?

SPEAKER_04:

I think a lot about leadership and from my own personal perspective. And it's wonderful to have other amazing female leaders around because I think female leadership's different, it feels different, and it's it's been an interesting personal journey for me to kind of feel my way into that and do leadership in a way that feels really authentic to me as a human being. But more broadly, in terms of leadership around innovation, um, I'm really lucky I've been on the management team of octopus on the early days energy side and later in the electric car part and also Monzo. And I think the culture is really, really important. It has to come from leadership. And one of the most important aspects of leadership, I think, is enabling people to get in their speed boat, drive as fast as they want, and saying, you can mess up, and I will give you air cover. And that's something that actually Paul and I had a really interesting conversation about, and it was wonderful to kind of loop back to your amazing message at the beginning of the day, which is leadership isn't just about protecting that Ming vase. True leadership to me is saying to my team, get in your speed boats, go as fast as you can. I will give you air cover, you are safe, you will make mistakes, that's okay. And we make mistakes all day, every day, and but we've hopefully fixed them really rapidly, and we're really passionate about doing that. But I think when you're moving fast and you're innovating, it's not always gonna work out. A lot of innovation fails, and that's okay, because there's so much learning in that, and next time you'll do better. But I think that's sort of that culture of not necessarily move fast and break stuff, which is very Silicon Valley, but more we're gonna try it, and we're gonna yes, we're gonna do it safely, but it's okay.

SPEAKER_02:

It's okay if it goes wrong. So I'm gonna bring in the R-word, which um risk. Um there's plenty of R words, um, because Jen, I know that that will be something that you'll want to draw out in, but if we can maybe segue also into moving on to how to generate and implement innovation when we're thinking about risk as well. So I guess in terms of that moving from ideas to action and being practical about it with that leadership culture, but embedding risk as well, could you maybe draw all that together in terms of how you embed this innovative culture?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so uh I think about this a lot. Um, and a lot of the way that I think about risk stems from when I was in the military. So I served in frontline Afghanistan when it was really kinetic. I was a captain in the artillery. I needed to make sure that my rounds landed in the right place. So everything I do, I have a very high risk tolerance, but a very acute appreciation of it. Risk itself is completely an anomalous concept. Really, what risk is, it's impact and probability. And I think it can become a lot less frightening. Because I think if you're listening to Jos talk, you're like, the Ming Vars is broken, all of this, you know, hope that we've been historical, amazing culture and support that we bought, we're not gonna do that. But actually, if you break it down into its constituent parts, you really can. So, first of all, I always break it down into impact and probability. So if something is gonna be really terrible, the impact, then even if the probability is low, you probably don't want to do it. But even if there's a really high chance that something's gonna go wrong, but the impact is really low, you can still give it a go because it might go right. So the first thing I ever do is I never let people talk to me about risk. I make people talk to me about impact and probability. And then I break the risk down, or you know, each of those into two halves again. And there's good risk and there's bad risks. And in my organizations, and I run lots of teams in lots of places, I've always said, I really want you to imagine a whiteboard. And on one side of the whiteboard are good risks. They're the things that Joss is alluding to. Like we tried to do this system change and it didn't work, but you can back out of it. And you want a really long list of good risks. The bad risks are when you leave a member not able to access alone because there's been some sort of failure and that really impacts somebody's life, and that is a bad outcome. It's when you do something that you know in your gut is morally wrong. Like they are fireable offenses and they're on the bad list. So breaking it down to its component parts, I think, starts to make the whole thing feel a little less overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02:

Great. So can you share a time when it's gone wrong where you've done something that didn't work out under the guise of innovation, like trying to be innovative, but it did crack a Ming Vase, let's say.

SPEAKER_03:

I think for us, so within my current business, there isn't really, and I think this was spoken about earlier, um, and why fintechs have an advantage is because we don't have any of that that legacy, that culture to take care of. We haven't got a Ming Vase, we've maybe got like a four-year-old clay pot. Um, and if you break it, you can kind of make it again. So that is the kind of the difference. But what I would say is that the Ming Vase, if it's kept in a safe gathering dust, has actually no intrinsic value. And actually, you've kind of got to get it out there to allow other people to appreciate, even if there's a bit of risk.

SPEAKER_02:

So, Joss, you had I kind of want to move away from the Ming Vars analogy, but really stretching that analogy, aren't we? In terms of translating that into that protection of legacy, which I think is a really important part, but also protecting members, protecting the services and that idea of community, how do we then move forward with this risk idea of innovation and protecting all of those aspects when we're thinking about our learnings in what can feel like a bit of a faster-paced fintech agile landscape, but translating that into what credit unions are trying to do?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, you know, reflecting on today, I think it's maybe it's helpful to decouple protecting your values and your mission from protecting how you're living it right now. And there's this really interesting concept which is like strong views weekly held. The way you do the how is not important because the people that love you, they don't love you for like your tech stack, or they don't love you because of your phone system, or because you have a management meeting at 2 pm on a Wednesday afternoon that lasts three hours. They love you because of the values. And the way that I think it's really useful to maybe bring that into an organization is to have some product principles. And I think a really good indicator from my point of view of a strong innovative culture is where you have like a product roadmap session, and if if that is not a really impassioned conversation, that's bad. Do you know what I mean? And that's where you want to bring your strong views weekly held. I mean, I've been in lots of organizations where we've sat down and had those conversations. I was also on the board of a business called Gaia that ensures your fertility. Absolutely amazing. There's loads of really good. They are really good guys, yeah. Loads of really good fintechs that I've worked with, but it I always think it's a good sign if you have some product principles which reflect your mission and values, and you use that to look at well, what's on our roadmap and that kind of urgent, important scale as well. Because you know your culture is strong if you're surrounded by a group of people who will have a really impassioned conversation about what should be built next, what should we be focusing our time and energy and resources on? Are we fixing tech debt? We're a fintech startup and we have amazing engineering capacity, but every Wednesday afternoon is still tech tech Wednesdays. You build up tech debt whatever you're doing all the time, and you always then still have that trade-off of like just from a recent example, we're talking about are we gonna like increase the platform capacity in AWS and build a new data flow into we use Mongo for that um and reporting, or are we going to add a functionality so we can put an ICE behind our multipot functionality? But those are the kind of trade-offs and the kind of conversations I think you want to be having, but then always link back to your principles.

SPEAKER_02:

What I'm really interested in is hearing you talk and just thinking about my application as a board member in a credit union is now thinking about that from that relationship between the executive team and the board and how both layers, if you like, of management within the organization can work together to be more comfortable with innovation. Jen, any any tips on how that can work?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, my my favourite is the red wine test. And um, I live and die by this. I know that somebody in the room has adopted it, which is phenomenal. Um, the red wine test came about because very frequently people assume understanding from others. Um, and particularly when you get CEO level, it can be because you have more information on what's going on in your organization than anybody else. You will assume, and every CEO I've worked with does this, that everybody understands things or has taken something that you have said in the way in which it's intended. And the reality is that's that's never true because we're humans. You need to be incredibly clear what good looks like. You need to be incredibly clear, and the reason why the red wine test comes, because I love red wine, is sitting here in a year's time, what will enable you to open that really nice bottle of red wine and enjoy it? What has what will you need to do to have earned that? You put it that way, it means you need to be incredibly clear as to what outcomes you're delivering. It's not, oh, we want to do this thing or that thing or other. It's like in a year's time, we would have done X, Y, Z. Now, the people that need to all be on the same page, and ideally you need to write it down, quite literally, is everybody on the board needs to agree with it, and everybody in the exec level needs to agree with it. And then everybody in the exec level should tell every single person in the organization. When I first got to Octopus, there were 47 concurrent technology projects and regulatory projects. There were 300 people. It was clinically insane and it was completely impossible, and there was massive change fatigue. So the first thing I did is so you've got to prioritize, which means you've got to stop. So we're gonna do half of this. So you need to tell me strategically where do you want to be in three years, which means we need to be where in one year, and therefore we don't need to do half of this stuff because it's got absolutely nothing to do with where we want to be in one year's time. And so those red wine tests are to me like absolutely the cornerstone of getting anywhere.

SPEAKER_02:

And in terms of where to start, I guess, or not necessarily where to start, but what the priorities are over the next few years in terms of innovation, maybe even short term, maybe six months. What kind of trends are you finding are quite exciting in FinTech that you think might be worth credit unions also thinking about? Just because you look scared, I'm gonna come to you. Maybe there's too many.

SPEAKER_04:

No, I kind of think it's really easy to sometimes put the cart before the before the horses, so the technology before the problem. And really, I kind of think it's not who cares what the solution under the hood is. I think don't use AI for AI's sake, or don't use APIs for API's sake. Really start with what are you trying to achieve, and then what is the right technology to meet those needs.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you think that's one of the misconceptions about innovation that it can just be taken to Right?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, we've got to use AIs. What a hassle. I've got to find a use case for AIs. AI is like horrifically unenvironmentally friendly, it's really annoying a lot of the time. Yeah, I use we use AI in our organization a lot, like across every function, but only where it's sort of there's a use case for it, and I've used it in those ways that's been horrifically annoying and like a horrible waste of time, and like creates all this content I don't want. But um, in terms of where I see it going, and I think it's more about going back to product market fit and going back to actually the really interesting conversation earlier about embedded finance, I think that is a big trend, really. It's about who's gonna win the sort of eyes of users ultimately. And do you bring the outside in, as like Lloyd's bank is trying to do, or are you putting the inside out? And where do you where are we landing on that? Cool. And I think what we're we're hope we're part of the okay, where is it natural for someone to save and it is that somehow embedded into the flow of the employer payroll contraction?

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you, Jen. Uh no, it's just it's following on from what you were saying about the use of AI, and so the MIT report basically said what most of us who are actually in AI already knew, which was the successful outcomes of AI adoption are absolutely terrible. It's 5%. Um, and I but the thing to take from that is that isn't because AI is rubbish. Some AI is rubbish for some things. The thing to take is the finding in that report is because the majority of it was, exactly to Josh's point, not outcome-oriented. A lot of boards in private sector are putting pressure on the exec to adopt AI, because AI is brilliant. You've got to start with a problem. What is the problem we're looking to solve? And then AI. There's three different types of AI. One of the types has a subtype, which is commercial large language models. So Chat GBT, it's great for creating an otter unicorn or forging a CV. It's absolutely catastrophic for financial services because it hallucinates, which it makes stuff up. It's incredibly costly. There's an AI pricing bubble where pricing's being suppressed. So when you're looking to implement a tool, AI is just another tool, a really powerful tool, but a tool. Understand the problem that you're starting with and then use the technologies. But the final thing I'll say on AI is AI is only as good as the data on which it's based. And agentic AI is a massive buzzword. It can only inform people. So the example I use is booking a restaurant. If you had a new PA who only started that week and you just said, Oh, I need to book a restaurant next week, she would be there going, Oh God, what, where, how, when? Um, because she doesn't know if you've got allergies, she doesn't know where you like to eat or your culinary preference, she doesn't know what time you like to eat. And so actually, it's completely useless asking her to do that. Agentic AI is exactly the same. Whereas five years down the line, she understands all of that. So agentic AI, when you're if you're looking at using agentic AI, which will probably be some of the first users that come to you, be really mindful that it cannot achieve its outcome if it doesn't have the data to enable it to do so. Perfect. Thank you both so much.

SPEAKER_02:

But about maybe coming back to you with some other questions of my own. But first of all, would anybody like to ask anything of Jen or Joss? Well, I have one other while everybody's getting their brains ready as well to ask hopefully a question. Um, to stay relevant, if I were to give you this sentence, to stay relevant, credit unions must start what?

SPEAKER_03:

Meeting the customer where they are or meeting your members where they are. Um I think the Roblox are used genius. It doesn't matter if your member is somebody that still has a checkbook. It doesn't matter if your member is somebody that doesn't know what a checkbook is. If you want to increase Your exposure to your members, you've got to meet them where they are.

SPEAKER_04:

I love that. I think I'd say build for the your prospective members who do you want to work with and just really understand them and their needs. I think don't worry about anyone else. Don't worry about your board. Don't worry about commercial. But it's true, it's like and and just doggedly understand who you who you want to help and understand their needs, make no assumptions and talk to them. So I think it's like, yeah, serve the needs of the people that are currently working with you, but they won't be the future. Talk to people that have never heard of a credit union, would never ordinarily work with you and understand what they want. And from a first principles perspective, like what is their job to be done? Most people don't want to open a savings account or get a personal loan. They want some financial security. So their job to be done is like they want to save for Christmas or whatever it is. They want to buy the car and just understand how they're doing it and how you can fit into that flow.

SPEAKER_02:

But that analogy, nobody wants to buy a hammer or something, they want to nail a share.

SPEAKER_03:

It's quite a good book called The Mom Test, M O M. Um, all of it won't be relevant, but what it really is talking to is how you have those conversations, how you understand what people want. And I think particularly to Justice's point, if you are looking to expand your membership or speak to people who don't know what a credit union is, I would it's it's a really short book, it's on Audible as well. I'd really suggest getting it because it's a really useful tool in how to have those conversations to get honest outcomes rather than leading people to tell you the information that you want.

SPEAKER_02:

Would you give advice about a step one to take if if anybody doesn't feel that they've they're able to do innovative things right now? What would be the starting point in step one that if someone asked for that advice from you? Jen, I'll just start with you and then Josh, I'll go to you.

SPEAKER_03:

Know where you want to get to. You wouldn't get in a car and go somewhere without knowing the destination. And I would just ask the room, is everybody really clear what good it looks like in a year's time? Is everybody really clear what they want to do in three years' time? And it's ironic saying that as a startup, because everything changes 75,000 times a day. Startup environment is not one to go in if you like continuity or clarity. But we still always have our North Star and we still always go to it. And we might then change that North Star, but we always have a clarity as to where we're going and we hold that, we have that strong opinion softly held. So if something changes, we adapt it. But it does mean that all of us are pulling in the same direction.

SPEAKER_04:

Just do you know what? I would say do it for the fun of it. It's a buzz, it's so much fun. Like it's so great when you see you've built something with your team, and I'm I'm sure you've all done it before. Isn't it wonderful when you deliver on a project and you get the first customer? I was just talking to someone yesterday who's like, we just implemented loan decisioning that takes you know eight minutes, and we're just sitting there waiting for the first person to sign up. And we're the same, we have a ping that goes off every time someone sets up a savings account, and then there's confetti for their first-time saver, which is and it's such a buzz because you know you've done something wonderful for someone. So, like, bring your team together and inject that sort of fun energy into doing something innovative and work with people that you enjoy working with and that you get energy from because it should be something that gives everyone positive energy. And I think that's a great way to think about change.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm just gonna add one more final thing in. Don't let perfect be uh the the killer of good. I love Parito's rule 8020. In every change project, the last 20% takes 80% of the effort. It's so easy to want to aim for perfect. You will always fail. You have to aim for perfect, but be super happy at 80%. And anything that incrementally moves the dial, and a number of people I've spoken to over the years where they're like, oh, we can't get all the way there. Well, just start. Do one really easy project, one really easy thing where you can see the benefit, particularly if you've been through a big project and it's failed. Do one really easy project, build that muscle memory. It's like a muscle, it's a skill, you've got to learn it. Pick something that will work, pick something that you have confidence you can do. And if you haven't got the skills in house, like again, somebody who is an HR manager doesn't know how to tools technology. I don't know how to be an HR manager. That's cool. Um, don't go to PWC in Deloitte. But there are a whole host of people out there who can be pragmatic, proportional, and useful who can, if you need that interim skill set of support, but trying to go for that perfect scenario will stop you from doing anything. Thank you so much, both. Last chance. anybody have a question?

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks. Do you think innovation in financial services is difficult because it's so highly regulated, particularly in Europe? And you were talking about taking risks and it's okay if things go wrong, but in in a regulated environment, it's more difficult because a mistake is then potentially more catastrophic because of the regulation.

SPEAKER_03:

I think it's yes and no. So we're actually regulated by the FCA. It depends what you're doing. And again, I would say what is the impact versus the probability? Almost no regulation is very clear. Most regulation is pretty ambiguous. And so whenever I'm doing a regulatory change project, I always go, do we want to be the Ferrari of this? Do we want to be the forward focus? If we're going to be the forward focus, we'll write a policy that says we're going to be the forward focus. That's totally allowed. And then we'll set our left and right of arc and we'll operate within there. So I think it's really doable. I think there are more considerations, but I also feel less risky doing that than building an aircraft hangar in Belize where I had to dangle off a cherry picker. So, you know, it I think we can be, I think it's such a good point to raise, but I think we can be a little guilty of going, oh, because we're regulated, it can be a bit hard. Go and work in manufacturing, go and work in construction. The risk is way worse. Or medicine.

SPEAKER_04:

No one's gonna die. But um, do you know what? I've I've been spending quite a lot of time with the regulators. They are removing barriers to innovation for hours of actively trying to encourage innovation. Talk to me about it. I'll tell you about it. I'll tell you how we do it. I want to share this knowledge. Similarly, how do we get mass adoption? Let's talk to those regulators and push the regulation where we want it to be. I think we'll get mass adoption of payroll savings if we can convince the Treasury slash the pension commission to enable us to have a salary sacrificable emergency savings pot that is comes out of gross salary so that the employer makes an NI saving and the individual gets a massive saving. But it is it would basically mean that everyone, it would be a no-brainer for everyone to adopt. So I think, yeah, regulation is tricky, but don't underestimate your power to move those goalposts if they don't work for you. Because I think you're coming from the right place. It's not sometimes really, it's more about well, how do we push financial inclusion? How do we push the right outcomes? Perfect. If that means change the regulation, let's change it.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. After such an insightful session, I wanted to have a follow-up chat with the three speakers to find out how delegates had received their advice and whether there was anything else they wanted to mention. Vicky, Jen, and Josh, thank you for making time to speak with me today. I'm curious to know what your final reflections on the conference are. Can we start with you, Jen?

SPEAKER_03:

Hi, yes. Um, I think I started to touch on it, but I probably didn't expand on it enough, which is how excited I am for the credit union sector more broadly. I think it potentially has so much opportunity to be a really exciting testbed for fintech innovation because it's slightly smaller than certainly than the the banks and the larger building societies. Um the decision makers operate much more closely together. So the board and the exec are very tightly aligned. And so, really, in theory, it is a potential for really being the spear edge of some innovation. I think what's holding the sector back is a lack of familiarity with how you adopt innovation. To be able to work with smaller businesses and with startups and with fintechs, there's a decision-making cycle. And for people like Joss and myself and Vicky in her previous role, one of the things that we would need to be able to operate successfully with any business and but specifically with credit unions, is for people to commit, to commit to testing, to commit to doing, to feeding back, and allowing that timeline to be a lot shorter. And so my one takeaway would be: I think everybody should be super positive about the opportunity for innovation in the credit union space. But it does mean that it can't operate at the tempo that it's currently operating with innovation. And if there are execs out there that are willing to do trials, do tests, move quickly, then they will have the pick of all of the opportunity that's out there because everybody will want to work with them. Whereas at the moment, there are quite a few businesses who won't go and work in the credit union space because the decision-making timeline is too long and therefore it's prohibitive for um for some fintechs operating.

SPEAKER_00:

And I think you mentioned, Jen, on the day, that chasing perfection might prevent credit unions from actually innovating and that they should be prepared to sometimes fail. But how should they deal with that failure if that does occur? And how should they prepare for it?

SPEAKER_03:

I think it's about putting things in in compartmentalizing. What you're not doing is you're not going into a whole huge, you're not changing the whole back-end system, for example. Um, you're not going live to customers and to members immediately. You can do tests, you can do trials, and any new or innovative technology worth their salt will enable you to try in a much less onerous way. Um, you know, we have a scenario, we have something called an affordability tool. You can go in, you can log in, it's free, you can test it out. Members don't need to see it at all, uh, and you can just see if it works for you. So there isn't actually any risk there. I think part of the maybe misperception is out of how some of the technology has worked in credit unions historically, which is somewhat uh monolithic back-end platforms and it's an all or nothing. Uh, and I really understand one of the questions questions you had was some of the feedback afterwards, is because historically credit unions had one big technology system, it's that or it's something else. Actually, now you have something called a tech stack, which is where lots of different technologies all interact neatly together. Um, I'm actually doing going to write up something about tech stack so people can read about that another time. But you can then do these tests with very low impact if it doesn't work. And it's just decoupling that mindset of this is what we had experienced in the past to this is what the opportunities to experience are in the future.

SPEAKER_00:

Joss, can we move on to you now? What are your final reflections based on the feedback you've received from some of the delegates at the conference?

SPEAKER_04:

Maybe just sort of piggybacking off uh Jen's response, which I wholeheartedly agree with, and I also would like to say like try out her technology. It's really easy to use and play with, it's brilliant, and I think it could be a real value add in this sector. Um I've had a few really great follow-up conversations with people um since the Swoboda conference, which was brilliant, and a few of them have focused on how can they bring their technology providers together to work together, and it's probably really similar to what Jen's saying. And one of the lovely things about the credit union sector is that there are lots of synergies between the sorts of technology and platforms that credit unions use, and therefore credit unions have quite a lot of collective buying power, whereas individually maybe not, but collectively they certainly do. And I think the other big strength of credit unions is their distribution power because of their amazing relationships with organizations, be that government bodies or large employers, um, housing associations, etc., within their communities. And so I suppose that one thing to talk about is as a buyer in Innovator Commons within a credit union, bring your technology providers together. And I think I'm sure Jen's notes about the tech stack will be very instructive in this regard. But you don't have to solve all these problems on your own as an individual credit union, and you also don't have to solve them individually. Do what you do best, bring people together. So we're looking forward to speaking to a couple of other technology providers in this space to look at well, if we can work together, then how does that ultimately benefit credit unions? So yeah, I'm really looking forward to exploring that. And now increasingly everyone's got APIs where we can all talk to each other, and that makes testing and trialing things that much easier. And I think another thing to say is most technology providers will have a good sandbox environment, which is a private environment where you can make sure that integrations work and test transactions and try technology. Um yeah, and you will fail, you will definitely a hundred percent fail if you look at the look at startups and the proportion that succeed, look at entrepreneurship. So within organizations and they try new things, most of it fails. That's fine, but that's normal. Look at every successful business on the planet and the proportion of initiatives that become massive and highly successful is probably smaller than you might think. And I think that's okay, you know, and there's all the shades in between like success and failure, but I think trying is always a success because you're building a culture of innovation and you're building a culture of let's iterate and improve. You won't get it right the first time, no one ever does. And that's sort of I was there from very early days at Monzo, um, uh to the point where we had nearly six million users, and yeah, I think it's a brilliant product now, obviously. Very, very um biased, but um it was trial and error. It's not that you wake up in the morning and you implement something that works beautifully. It's yeah, it takes time and that's all part of the process, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the challenges sometimes faced is that people are used to doing things in the way they've always done them, so they might be you know reluctant to try a new way of doing things. How do you work to bring them along with you on that journey to change?

SPEAKER_04:

I think sometimes people need a little push though, need a little push. They need to say this is where we're going. And I think that takes leadership. So there's lots of different ways of doing it, isn't there? And sort of showing people um how that works, asking people what they enjoy. I think a lot of that mindset about change, isn't it? Just talking about change. Sometimes change is good, sometimes it's bad. I think usually it's fear or insecurity. People are fearful for their jobs, or they're fearful they're gonna get in trouble, or they're yeah, um, maybe addressing that as well. But then sometimes it's also just some leadership thing. This is where we're going and this is why we're doing it. Uh and sort of being strong in that and bringing enthusiasm is important, like lead by example.

SPEAKER_03:

Jen, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I just want to again um completely agree with everything that Josh said. I think a lot of people don't like change because they're worried about the outcome to them on a personal level with that change. And I think people are fearful, there's so much rhetoric, particularly with AI, about AI stealing jobs. I think exactly to Joss's point, it's about leadership and it's about saying we're doing this because it will create capacity for us to do the things we haven't got time to do. We're not going to fire you, we're not trying to reduce headcount. What we're trying to do is offer loans in two days, not 10 days. What we want to be able to do is understand if documents have been tampered with or not. We want to be able to add another product to our service. It's really being very clear as to why you're conducting the change, what your expectations of people are. And then, as I mentioned in the talk, aligning um incentives with success. So you can't ask people to do change at the side of their desk and expect it to go well. You know, it takes a huge amount of time and effort to change anything. And so you've really got to be in a situation where you are allowing people the capacity to do it well, not expecting it to just magically happen. And I think people who haven't led through change often underestimate the time and effort that they need to apportion for people to do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Vicky, can I come to you now? What are your final reflections on this topic?

SPEAKER_02:

What was brilliant for me and what I really enjoyed about talking to Josh and Jen was that they were really demonstrating innovation in practice. And I think it's not just what you've done with your companies and the products and services that you've delivered, but it's showing how that mindset of innovation and change really drives growth and actually building something that's needed and targets what you know potential partners and other firms need. And I think for me the key thing that I wish we'd been able to touch on a bit more is the alignment of fintech and the credit union industry and how those two things, um, those two elements kind of work really well together because there's such a purpose-driven problem-solving kind of mentality. And that idea of community, I think with fintechs, it's just so strongly aligned to the credit union industry too. So when we talk about collaborations or partnerships that credit unions really should be making more use of, in my view, working with fintechs and actually working alongside them in terms of that innovation and change mentality, but also working with them to embed their products and services, which have done a lot of the legwork that credit unions maybe can't get to themselves. There's real mutually beneficial partnerships to be formed there, and I think credit unions really should and could be making more use of that because it really is mutually beneficial. But I just think it was um I it was such a good note to end on and such a um exciting note, and I just really hope that there's further conversations that will happen as a result of that, and it's delightful to hear that Josh and Jen are having some of those conversations now. But I really hope they go forward and grow, and I think it's something that will be, as I say, really mutually beneficial for credit unions and the fintechs that they work with. I think really extending on those partnerships and really looking at how they can work is part of the innovation that needs to happen, not just thinking about what's happening with tech. And so that was kind of key takeout for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you all. I think you have given our listeners and Swoboda conference delegates plenty of food for thought. This is a topic we will be revisiting, and I'm sure we will hear from you again in the future. I think what stood out to me the most was the important role leaders play in driving innovation by being very clear about why they're pursuing change and what the expectations are. It was also great to hear your thoughts on how to approach risks, and of course your final reflections on the value of collaboration. To our listeners, thank you for listening. I hope you'll join us for the next episode. Be sure to follow the Soboda Research Center on social media to find out when the next episode is released.