BANKING TECH AWARDS USA 2023 FINALIST: WECU

We also heavily invested in building out a dedicated Digital Products Team and have worked hard to develop a modern and robust mobile and online banking solution with our partners BankingOn and Technivation, which utilizes the APIs and open nature of both Fiserv DNA and Fiserv Architect. The platforms fully leverages tools like Plaid via API for seamless account aggregation and money movement across both deposit accounts, liability accounts like loans and credit cards, and investment accounts. These accounts are provided and displayed in-line with the first party account relationships at the organization. There is no need for a member to click into a separate and completely divorced PFM solution via SSO. Not only does this provide a better member experience it provided a substantial cost savings to the credit union, fueling other investments into additional fintech partnerships.

When the credit union took this work on in earnest, it was coming off of the back of a core conversion to Fiserv DNA and a digital banking conversion to Fiserv Architect. While this conversion was successful, our members were incredibly displeased with the out of box experience with Fiserv Architect and our relationship NPS score collapsed from the high 60s down to 27. That allowed for ample room to really prioritize and improve the experience. This resulted in some internal adjustments in leadership of the digital strategy and overall ownership of key platforms and relationships supporting these critical channels.

Ultimately this exercise forced the credit union to fully embrace digital transformation and recognize that no single vendor was going to provide the types of experiences we were looking for or that our membership expected us to deliver.

Knowing that member buy-in and a sense of ownership was crucial if we hoped to deliver an experience that our members would be thrilled with, WECU invested heavily in member listening and built a dedicated community for our membership to help inform strategy based upon their needs. This included establishing partnerships with Qualtrics and Influitive to provide key technologies that power these initiatives. Since we began this work, NPS has consistently gone up and we wrapped up the end of Q4 2023 with a Relationship NPS score of 73.29.

We also heavily invested in building out a dedicated Digital Products Team and have worked hard to develop a modern and robust mobile and online banking solution with our partners BankingOn and Technivation, which utilizes the APIs and open nature of both Fiserv DNA and Fiserv Architect. The platforms fully leverages tools like Plaid via API for seamless account aggregation and money movement across both deposit accounts, liability accounts like loans and credit cards, and investment accounts. These accounts are provided and displayed in-line with the first party account relationships at the organization.

There is no need for a member to click into a separate and completely divorced PFM solution via SSO. Not only does this provide a better member experience it provided a substantial cost savings to the credit union, fueling other investments into additional fintech partnerships. We took a similar approach with rewards and developed a hybrid experience leveraging both APIs and an SSO with our partner Amplifi to deliver rewards points natively in the experience.

This was critical as we overhauled core deposit products and launched new products to market that were tenanted around rewards. To support organizational growth goals and to ensure we are meeting our members where they are, we have built a dedicated mobile marketplace within our app that allows our members to rapidly find products that fit them and open them in under a minute, leveraging vendors like Mantl and Alloy to ensure those accounts are opened quickly and securely, directly to the Core without manual intervention. On the consumer lending front, we offer a similar experience by rapidly prequalifying members through our partnership with Credit Snap and Experian.

To drive further adoption of key services that drive operational efficiency and lower cost, we built out a function called “Do More With WECU” in the mobile app that highlights key functions within the app like eStatement enrollment and direct deposit switch, then provides a quick and seamless path for quick enrollment leveraging APIs. We also partnered with Ensenta and leveraged their fixable/confirmable messaging APIs for mobile deposit capture. This detects when a mobile deposit will likely get rejected and prompts the member to either fix the error or confirm all of the data is correct before submission of the item. An example would be where a member mistakenly types $200 as the deposit amount, but Ensenta detects that the actual amount of the check is $20.

The member is presented with easy to understand language and guided through a number of prompts to either fix their data entry mistake or confirm that their entry is correct. When members do run into challenges, we provide easy to use self-service options like Posh which drives our digital assistant technology. To date that solution has an 80% containment rate and we provide easy off ramps into both our appointment 3 of 7 scheduling solution through Coconut or directly into our contact center live chat. If a member does attempt to book an appointment and we have digital self-service options available like opening an account or applying for a loan, members are gently nudged and offered the ability to open the account immediately. Currently the app sits at 4.8 on iOS and 4.7 on Android with nearly 14,500 reviews.

Considering WECU currently operates within the confines of one county in Washington State, we consider this a fantastic barometer of engagement and proof that even community-based institutions can compete digitally if they are strategic with their partnerships and apply dedicated focus on market differentiation and listening to their members or customers. As we head into 2023, we will be working hard on nativizing friend referrals, debit card round up, and really retooling the traditional More Menu seen in so many apps, into a hub for connecting with the credit union either electronically, in person, or at community events we host or sponsor. This hasn't been an easy journey and there is still a long ways to go, but we wanted to enter into the Banking Tech Awards contest to show other smaller, community based FIs that digital transformation and a robust, modern CX is possible with smart investment and a strategic vision. We would love to show off what we’ve built and encourage you to reach out.

https://www.wecu.com/