Although we’re not quite halfway through the year yet, January this year feels like a lifetime ago. With the Covid-19 pandemic, everything changed. So, given that credit unions have been closing branches, digital channels reign supreme, and members have dealt with threats to their lives and livelihoods…

Now’s a great time to look at our predictions at the beginning of the year to see what changed.

Read on to see seven technology trends that credit unions should keep a close eye on (especially in the face of the coronavirus).

Continue reading “2020 Credit Union Technology Trends to Watch” →

The pillar of the Credit Union industry is member service. Credit Unions have strong relationships with their members and strive to do what is right. It is a common misconception that Artificial Intelligence will remove the human aspect from banking with a Credit Union. In reality, AI is an opportunity to deepen those already strong member relationships. Artificial Intelligence can automate and improve services delivered to members while also improving your Credit Union’s bottom line.

Implementing Artificial Intelligence at your Credit Union can allow you to:

• Offer a new service to a member at an opportune time
• Provide an even greater customer service experience when a member has an issue
• Deliver the convenience members seek and delight your customers

These are the experiences members are demanding and that Credit Unions must provide in order to remain competitive in today’s banking environment. And, all this starts with data.

Continue reading “Why Credit Unions Need to Implement Artificial Intelligence” →

It’s CU 2.0 Fintech Friday! Today, Chris Otey sits down with Coalesce AI to discuss all things credit union, fintech, and digital innovation.

Coalesce.ai helps credit unions introduce the power of AI and machine learning into their operational ecosystem. Their platform utilizes User-Defined Machine Learning, which allows clients to train Coalesce.ai’s automation platform how to gain expertise in a certain set of tasks.

Coalesce.ai’s systems helps credit unions and financial industries reduce error and increase efficiency while saving time. By reducing or eliminating the possibility for human error and the necessity for manual labor, Coalesce.ai lets ten credit union employees accomplish the work of a hundred.

For credit unions, Coalesce.ai found that “the operations of a financial services firm like a credit union today requires—especially in the middle and back office—a lot of tedious, manual, repetitive work: opening spreadsheets, scanning emails, filtering through PDF documents. And with this new AI technology, we’ve been able to automate the way that some of that gets done at credit unions.”

Continue reading “CU 2.0 Fintech Friday: Coalesce AI” →

It’s the Credit Union podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the fourteenth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is talking about the real credit union mission. Today’s subject is AI for credit unions.

Welcome to AI, Part 2 in the CU 2.0 Podcast series.  Last week our podcast explored email and AI through the eyes of Coalesce, a DCU Fintech Innovation Lab company. This week, in Part 2, we explore voice and AI through Posh Development, another DCU Fintech Innovation Lab company – a podcast about the Fintech Lab can be found here.

Either way, great stuff is happening that you need to know about to stay current.

Bank of America is pushing its AI bot Erica hard. But just maybe you can fight back with your own voice bot. That’s part of the Posh promise.

This is a podcast you can’t miss. AI definitely is the future. It’s up to you to understand and control it.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the Credit Union podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the thirteenth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is talking about the real credit union mission.

Welcome to AI, Part 1 in the CU2.0 Podcast series.  Next week we’ll post AI, Part 2, an exploration of voice and AI. This week looks at a company focused on text and AI. Both are products of the DCU Fintech Innovation Lab in Boston – a podcast about that here.

Either way, great stuff is happening that you need to know about to stay current.

Why? It’s because a lot of credit union work is mundane, tedious, boring really. It needs doing, no question, but how best?

Enter Coalesce. The company’s tagline says it all:  “AI software that automates tedious work for financial services.”

You’re not interested because credit unions are special? Coalesce is in the DCU Fintech Innovation Lab in Boston – hear the podcast about the lab here – and it is already working with Digital Federal Credit Union, BECU, and the NASA credit union, among other financial institutions (including some megabanks). It has a good credit union pedigree.

The Coalesce focus is on automating monotonous, rote work, particularly around handling incoming member emails (70% it turns out can be answered by machines) and also auto loan applications. Hunting for fraud is another, promising avenue for AI.  AI, it turns out, is good doing these jobs faster and cheaper than people.

Are the machines taking over? Greg Woolf, the Coalesce founder and CEO, laughed at that.  For good reason. The Coalesce version of AI is built around input from people who also are in charge.

Put away those Matrix fears and come for a ride into tomorrow where machines do a lot of the work people honestly don’t want to do and the machines are good at it.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!