This episode of the TechSolutions4CUs podcast, hosted by Finopotamus Publisher John San Filippo, features Anna Khalzova and Slava Akulov, the co-founders of Jupid, discussing their white-labeled solution for credit unions looking to serve small business members.

The Core Problem and Jupid’s Solution

Jupid aims to close the gap between credit unions and small businesses, particularly new ventures, which often do not view a credit union as their primary financial institution at the company formation stage. The Jupid platform provides a crucial set of tools to help small business owners with compliance, tax filing, and accounting, allowing them to focus on their core business.

The Member Experience

For a small business member, the Jupid platform simplifies running a business, promising less stress.

• Formation and Compliance: The platform offers a simple, streamlined process for company formation, with support from the local credit union. It provides a structured timeline of compliance tasks for the year, sends reminders, and can even file documents like franchise taxes on the member's behalf, which can be approved through digital banking.
• AI Assistant: Jupid features an AI assistant, accessible through messengers like WhatsApp or iMessage. This assistant proactively categorizes transactions and can answer business questions on the go. It gains deep context from various sources, including bank accounts, emails, and web searches, to organize operational data, ensure compliance, and streamline financial preparation.
• Integration: Jupid integrates with existing tools like QuickBooks, automating manual tasks that business owners or accountants would otherwise have to do. The solution is also designed to be tightly integrated within the credit union's digital banking experience.

Business Model and Credit Union Benefit

Jupid's model is designed to be a "long-term gain" and a "sticky" relationship for the credit union.

• Revenue: The recommended model is a subscription service for accounting, tax filing, and compliance, priced at approximately $50 a month, which is a fraction of the average annual cost a small business spends on compliance. Credit unions receive a 20% revenue share from this subscription fee.
• Acquisition: Jupid offers the company formation service for free if the business owner signs up for a business account and the platform's tax/accounting services, which serves as a powerful acquisition tool. The credit union can also choose to refund the state formation fees as an added incentive.
• Target Market: The platform is an effective tool for credit unions to target their existing retail members who are already running a business through their personal accounts (estimated at around 25% of a credit union's member base).

Implementation and Partnership

Jupid is pre-integrated with digital banking platforms like Banno and Q2, with a target implementation time of about four weeks. The ideal credit union partner is one in the $1 to $10 billion asset range that is actively committed to growing its small business presence. Once fully implemented, the platform is designed to be highly self-sufficient, saving credit union staff time.

AI and the Future

The co-founders emphasize that Jupid's core technology is a proprietary AI system trained on tax laws. To ensure trust, all critical actions and filings are supervised by internal human accountants (CPAs). They predict that AI will become an expected, pervasive layer in every part of life, including banking, driving the need for personalized, faster, and cheaper services.

As part of our ongoing commitment at Finopotamus to cover the tech topics you won't see in other credit union outlets, we're pleased to offer a very important episode of TechSolutions4CUs on a very important topic: cloud repatriation. This episode features cloud repatriation experts Kevin Heisser and Ian Nock from ArcShift. Cloud repatriation is becoming an increasingly popular idea as organizations that moved all their operations to the cloud are now realizing there’s a strong argument for bringing some of their workload back on-premise.

The ArcShift co-founders explain that their company was founded to address what they see as a backward trend in the tech industry, where solutions are often driven by vendor incentives and sales quotas rather than customer needs. ArcShift’s mission is to put people back in control of their data and save them money. They emphasize that they are not suggesting organizations should pull everything out of the cloud, but rather advocating for a hybrid approach. This hybrid model allows organizations to keep some functions in the cloud, while moving certain workloads back on-premise for reasons such as cost savings, security, and performance.

One of the main reasons more organizations aren't pursuing cloud repatriation is the strong bias from tech vendors, who profit from the high profit margins and annual recurring revenue (ARR) of cloud services. Cloud companies also make it very easy to migrate data into the cloud with various tools, but make it very difficult to get data out.

Another factor is that IT professionals may be overwhelmed and hesitant to move their production workloads for fear of downtime or other complications. ArcShift addresses this by providing a platform and toolset that make the repatriation process easy and seamless, including a TCO (total cost of ownership) tool to help organizations assess potential savings.

In addition to cost savings, other benefits of cloud repatriation include enhanced security and better support. In the cloud, hardware is often shared, and there is a risk of misconfigurations or vulnerabilities that can expose data. When a problem occurs, a company with a small infrastructure may not receive timely support from public cloud providers. AI workloads are particularly good candidates for repatriation due to their high cost in the cloud. The cost of running AI infrastructure in the cloud can be "enormously" expensive, and companies are finding that they can buy their own infrastructure for a fraction of the cost and have more control. ArcShift is vendor-agnostic, meaning they do not sell any hardware or software, so their recommendations are unbiased and focused solely on the customer's needs.

In this episode of TechSolutions4CUs, host John San Filippo welcomes marketing expert Alicia Disantis to discuss foundational marketing strategies for small organizations, including fintechs and credit unions, operating on a shoestring budget.

Alicia challenges the "Field of Dreams" mentality, where good products are expected to sell themselves. She emphasizes that in today's crowded market, consistent messaging and strategic outreach are crucial.

Key takeaways from their conversation include:

• Building Trust as a Core Principle: Alicia highlights recent data showing trust in an organization and its information as the number one buying factor, surpassing convenience and price.
• The Four Pillars of Marketing Success: She outlines four essential, low-cost strategies:
  1. Define Your Brand Voice: Understand and consistently project your brand's personality across all platforms to build credibility.
  2. Survey Your Audience: Utilize simple, open-ended surveys to gain insights into how customers perceive your brand, why they choose you, and where you can improve.
  3. Invest in a Quality Website: A professional and user-friendly website is non-negotiable for establishing credibility and avoiding distrust.
  4. Leverage Partnerships: Collaborate with trusted organizations to expand your reach and build credibility through association.
• The Intangible Value of Marketing: Both John and Alicia discuss the challenge of measuring marketing ROI, agreeing that not all impactful marketing efforts can be immediately quantified. They also touch upon the evolving landscape of PR, emphasizing the importance of relationships and consistent effort.
• Navigating Generational Differences: The conversation touches on how different generations interact with technology and financial services, from millennials' preference for digital interactions to Gen Z's reliance on social media and the growing use of "buy now, pay later" services.
• The Enduring Importance of Human Connection: Despite technological advancements, both agree that in-person interactions and reliable human support remain vital for building and maintaining customer trust, particularly during critical moments.

This episode offers actionable advice for small financial institutions looking to enhance their marketing efforts without breaking the bank.