The desire to boost member engagement was the driving force behind the Knoxville, Tenn.-based, $1.84 billion ORNL Federal Credit Union's implementation of a new mobile banking experience.
Until recently, ORNL FCU, which was chartered in 1948 to serve employees of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has been cautious about adopting new technology. That changed when the credit union developed an enterprise strategy built on the Austin, Texas-based Kony's cloud-based mobile platform and middleware to retain and grow its membership.
Since rolling out the new mobile application, the credit union has averaged about 3,400 new mobile banking app downloads monthly.
"Our strategy has been wrapped around this whole concept of the intersection of technology with the end-user experience," Dawn Brummett, senior vice president/chief credit and operating officer for ORNL FCU, said.
She added that concept led the credit union to proactively seek new technology to serve its more than 150,000 members and was the main impetus behind the launch of its new mobile application earlier this year.
ORNL FCU, which has 32 branches, began looking at the evolution of its mobile banking app more than two years ago, Brummett explained. The credit union researched where mobile banking was headed and how it related to financial services, and used those results to determine how to engage its membership through mobile banking.
Brummett said ORNL FCU began the process by generating teams to gain feedback from employees and members. Then, the credit union put together a checklist of desired features and their priority levels.
"Our must-have list was very, very important because it wasn't just your basic features on your mobile applications, they were things we wanted to roll out right away, that really guided us through our selection process," she said.
One of the must-haves was integration with its core banking system, and the credit union looked for a vendor that could deliver that capability. It researched more than 20 different mobile platform vendors, pulled in four for demos and ultimately decided on Kony.
The implementation process began in July 2014 and roll-out took place in March 2015. The process included installing the Kony Mobility Platform – an open, standards-based, integrated platform for mobile app development – and the Kony MobileFabric solution, a mobile middleware service that integrates with core banking systems from providers such as Fiserv, Jack Henry, FIS or Finacle.
"It also provides mobile users with single sign-on access across multiple backend systems, a huge convenience for members," Dave Shirk, president, product and marketing for Kony, said.
Read more about ORNL FCU's new mobile app in the Nov. 4, 2015 print issue of CU Times.
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Roy Urrico
Roy W. Urrico specializes in articles about financial technology and services for Credit Union Times, as well as ghostwriting, copywriting, and case studies. Also: writer/editor of a semi-annual newsletter for Association for Financial Technology since 1997 and history projects funded by the U.S Interior Department, National Park Service and Warren County (N.Y.).
