How important is digital banking to credit unions? Three announcements, which focus on enhancing member experience and knowledge, include chronicling a digital transformation journey, chatbot integration and interactive mobile video banking.

The $1.65 billion Burbank, Calif.-based Partners Federal Credit Union, which serves Walt Disney Company cast members, employees and their families, embarked on a new digital transformation journey. Partners FCU is opening up about their digital transformation journey and chronicling the good, the bad and the ugly via documentary-style videos.

Faced with the challenge of coordinating its community branches with services of a digital credit union to compete with big banks like Bank of America and Chase, Partners FCU partnered with Austin, Texas-based digital apps company Kony and Boston Consulting Group, to completely overhaul its technologies, processes, systems and services to better address the needs of its employees and customers including:

• Enhancing its app offerings in real-time while making additional enhancements along the way.
• Accelerating digital innovations and solutions from what it's now (releasing updates to its apps once every 6 months) to 4 times as fast (releasing updates every other week).

The $2.2 billion Orlando, Fla.-based FAIRWINDS Credit Union launched its FAIRWINDS Virtual Advisor in partnership with Abe AI, an Orlando-based Artificial Intelligence software company specializing in digital consumer financial technology. FAIRWINDS said it is the first financial institution headquartered in Florida to offer this service to its members.