In this episode of TechSolutions4CUs, host John San Filippo is joined by Angi Milano and Holly Glowaty, the co-hosts of the GTM Loop podcast. Together, they dive into the critical elements of go-to-market (GTM) strategies, exploring how fintechs can align with the credit union mission and how credit unions can position themselves as partners of choice.

Angi and Holly explain that the GTM Loop podcast was created to help fintechs navigate the tactical steps of strategy development, specifically teaching them how to speak the language of the credit union industry. The group discusses why GTM has evolved from a general business term into a vital discipline for launching products in new verticals.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Common Fintech Mistakes: The guests break down where fintechs often go wrong, such as taking a "scattershot" approach rather than finding the right fit, and relying too heavily on a single person’s connections (the Rolodex strategy) rather than building a sustainable process. Angi notes a critical error: using banking terms like "customer" instead of "member" and leading with ROI rather than mission alignment.
• The Power of Small Credit Unions: While many vendors chase the largest institutions, Angi and Holly argue that small credit unions are often more agile and eager to adopt fintech as a growth lever. They advise vendors to evaluate potential partners based on "active members" rather than just asset size.
• Credit Unions vs. Banks: The discussion clarifies the fundamental difference between these institutions. Banks often prioritize bottom-line returns, while credit unions are mission-driven cooperatives where a single member's experience can mobilize the entire team.
• AI and Data Hygiene: The trio tackles the buzz around AI. Holly stresses that institutions cannot successfully adopt AI without first cleaning up their data. They advise against using "AI for AI's sake," recommending instead that credit unions identify specific pain points and involve the staff feeling that pain in the solution design.
• Future Predictions: The episode wraps up with crystal ball predictions. Angi foresees stablecoins becoming the next dominant topic at conferences, while Holly predicts that upcoming changes to Visa and Mastercard interchange rules will fundamentally shift how institutions and retailers approach loyalty programs.

Join us for a conversation that bridges the gap between fintech innovators and the credit union mission.

In this episode of TechSolutions4CUs, host John San Filippo welcomes Kristen Castell, Managing Director of CAFÉ (Center for Accelerating Financial Equity), a nonprofit organization.

The conversation dives into the origin story of CAFÉ, which was launched two and a half years ago out of a new fintech innovation hub in Newark, Delaware. It began as a public-private partnership involving Discover Financial, the University of Delaware, and other organizations dedicated to building new fintech innovation that helps people's lives. CAFÉ's primary mission is to advance financial wellness for low to moderate-income people across the US.

Kristen explains how CAFÉ serves the credit union community:

• Connecting Fintechs and Credit Unions: CAFÉ runs competitive Accelerator programs to help early-stage fintech companies, which have been vetted for strong product-market fit, existing customers, and mission-driven culture, accelerate their growth. CAFÉ then introduces these solutions to credit unions looking for innovative ways to help their members.
• Vetting Process: The fintechs undergo a rigorous, competitive process to enter CAFÉ's programs, which includes looking at the business, the product, and requiring them to already have credit union or other financial institution customers. A top priority for CAFÉ is the company's culture, focusing on collaborative, mission-driven people.
• Solutions for Members: The fintechs supported by CAFÉ offer diverse products, including more efficient ways to provide loans to small businesses and individuals, digital banking products, microloan services (like Salus), SBA 7A loans (like Parlay), and tools to help members search for government benefits (like Starlight).

The discussion also covers:

• Technology Trends: The role of technology in helping credit unions digitize their offerings, improve backend processes, and gain better member insights, specifically mentioning AI. Kristen notes that almost every fintech they work with incorporates AI in some way.
• Challenges for Smaller Credit Unions: They discuss the potential for smaller credit unions to be overwhelmed by the number of tech relationships, suggesting collaboration through groups like CUSOs (Credit Union Service Organizations) or partnering with fintechs that come as a package to ease the onboarding process.
• Future Outlook: Kristen shares her prediction for the future, expressing a strong belief in blockchain technology to facilitate instant global payments, improve security through tokenization, and enhance identity management for financial accounts. She also stresses the shift from providing "products" to providing a full experience in members' financial lives.
• Getting Involved: Credit unions can engage with CAFÉ by offering industry expertise as a speaker, becoming a sponsor, or simply by being interested in learning about and potentially partnering with the vetted fintech innovations. CAFÉ also hosts the annual Fintechs and Fairways Conference in Delaware.

To learn more about CAFÉ, you can visit FTCafe.org.

Tired of casting a wide net and coming up empty? The secret to revitalizing your credit union might be to start thinking small.

In this episode, host John San Filippo sits down with Michael Duncan, CEO and founder of digital banking provider Bankjoy, to discuss the strategy of vertical banking (also known as niche banking or sub-branding). This approach allows community financial institutions to leverage their existing charter to create a discrete, digital brand that caters to a very specific audience.

You'll learn:

• The Power of Niche Focus: How ignoring 99% of the market can lead to massive growth by focusing on a specific, unmet need.
• Real-World Success Story: The case of Panacea Financial, a digital-only bank serving doctors and healthcare professionals, which achieved over half a billion dollars in assets in just a few years by solving the unique financial problems faced by young physicians.
• Potential Niches for CUs: Other segments credit unions can target, such as military service, teachers, and even specific demographics like women or younger generations (Gen Z).
• Overcoming Hurdles: Mike addresses the common concerns of staffing, marketing a digital-only brand, and the scary part—the technology.
• Technology Simplification: Discover how modern digital banking providers like Bankjoy make it possible for you to launch a new vertical brand in as little as six weeks to three months without having to replace your core system.

Mike's key takeaway for hesitant credit union CEOs? "Don't delay. It's not as big as you think." Start small, experiment, and see if this targeted, personalized approach is the solution to your growth challenges.

You're also invited to download Bankjoys white paper on the topic: How Vertical Banking DrivesGrowth for CommunityFinancial Institutions -Reach New Markets with Targeted, Niche Banking Experiences.

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.

On this episode of TechSolutions4CUs, we welcome Jason Cain, co-founder and CSO of ShiftMate, to discuss their innovative AI co-pilot for credit unions. Jason shares his unique perspective, born from decades of experience within credit unions and selling fintech solutions, on how ShiftMate addresses long-standing challenges by unifying data, AI, and workflow automation.

We explore how this platform empowers frontline staff with actionable insights and provides senior management with institutional insights by analyzing aggregated data. Tune in to understand ShiftMate's flexible deployment, its potential to replace legacy systems, and Jason's predictions for the transformative impact of AI on the financial well-being of members and the industry as a whole.

In this episode of Tech Solutions for CUs, host John San Filippo interviews Ronny Chapman about his new company, VisionFI. Chapman explains that VisionFI is not a standalone product but a component that plugs into other solutions like loan origination systems (LOS) or new account opening platforms, and even Microsoft Office.

VisionFI's core function is to use multimodal AI to read images, photos, and documents, taking unstructured data and bringing structure to it. Chapman provides an example of its original use case: taking a picture of a car's VIN through the windshield to extract the VIN, eliminating manual input. The technology has since evolved to process various documents such as tax returns, operating agreements, and auto loan packages.

A significant use case in auto lending involves members bringing paperwork from a car dealer to the credit union. VisionFI can process this paperwork, like retail installment contracts and buyer's orders, by simply taking a photo, converting what would be a 30-minute manual entry process into an automated input for the LOS. This effectively turns a dealer-financed loan into a direct loan or refinance for the credit union.

Chapman also discusses how VisionFI can be used for loan quality checks, aiming for 100% accuracy rather than sample checks. He emphasizes that VisionFI doesn't add judgment or decisioning but reads information faster than a human, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks.

Regarding pricing, VisionFI charges per 1 million "tokens," which represent computational thought and are a measure of AI consumption. Chapman estimates that humans process around 500 tokens per minute, while VisionFI achieves about 26,000 tokens per minute. He suggests that a human's token processing can cost $300-$700 per million tokens, while VisionFI could be $50-$60 per million tokens, demonstrating a significant ROI.

Chapman shares an aspirational use case where VisionFI could allow members to simply send documents like tax returns, pay stubs, or W2s, and the system would automatically convert and input the data into an application, eliminating the need for manual keying and enhancing member service. He also predicts a future where personal consumer tools, like Apple iCloud or Google accounts, will be more integrated with financial services for seamless document sharing and online banking logins.

Credit union executives interested in learning more can contact Ronny Chapman at rc@visionfi.ai or visit visionfi.ai. He welcomes discussions on potential use cases and opportunities to improve member experience.