Some credit unions, already sold on the platform, are proceeding in various stages of development with SmartCore. The $71 million, Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Kaiperm Diablo Federal Credit Union, which is set to go live soon, selected NYMBUS to enable growth, differentiate itself and modernize the member digital experience. Others in the conversion process include the $172 million, Washington, Penn.-based CHROME Federal Credit Union, which needed help transforming its business to being digital-first; and the $147 million, Newtown, Pa.-based Inspire Federal Credit Union, which wanted to replace outmoded technology that was holding the financial institution back.

Mitchell explained the four biggest items on credit unions' balance sheets for expenses are the core system, internet banking, mobile and debit. "Some credit unions are paying more for their debit processing than they're paying for core. It's outrageous." Mitchell said, adding NYMBUS wanted to develop a core system that addressed those four major points. "It obviously makes life a lot easier for us with a lot of people waiting to go live as early adopters."

Developing the system brought the industry's pains to the surface, including a perfect storm of competition from traditional and non-traditional players, and a demographic shift.

There are also consumers who want the "Amazon experience" everywhere, and if they get it from a trusted financial advisor like a credit union, they'll become loyal. Credit unions have an advantage in capturing these consumers, as they've already built trust and affinity with their members. When that's paired with better technology, credit unions can leverage their established relationships and step up the entire member experience.

To further capitalize on those relationships, Mitchell said he believes credit unions need better front-end and digital technologies, and must onboard new members, cross-sell products and give members the experience they want.

Inspire, for example, saw its assets almost double in less than four years. Despite this, President/CEO Jim Merrill acknowledged antiquated technology inhibited the credit union's development and efficiency. "With our previous core, workflow issues were our biggest enemy," he said, noting that for instance, it could take 30 to 45 minutes to open a new account and two to three hours for ACH. "Also, Band-Aids were used for long-term fixes and the inflexibility of the core required us to engage with too many different vendors."

To lay the foundation for its next chapter of growth and expansion, Inspire wanted a forward-thinking technology partner that understood digital banking and consumer needs, and chose NYMBUS as a solution to its challenges. "We needed an agile partner to provide us with the cutting-edge technology to give us access to the right data when we need it and at the click of a button, in order to gain operational insights and efficiencies," Merrill said.

So how does NYMBUS help a typical credit union in this new banking world? For one thing, it does not sell in-house platforms. "In today's world of cybersecurity and fraud there is absolutely no reason anybody should have servers in their basement, for God's sake," Mitchell said. "It's all state-of-the-art technology. You can control it in a private cloud, you have your own rack and you have your own access to the code. You can make, configure and do everything in real-time. It's better because we're 365, 24/7, taking care of you so you can sleep at night."

Inspire, which has three branches (Newtown, Bristol and Langhorne), faces not only nontraditional competitors but traditional rivals as well. "We're in a suburb of the fifth biggest city in the country, [Philadelphia,] so there's no shortage of extremely large credit unions around here. We also have no shortage of large regional money center banks," Merrill noted.

That plays to Inspire's strategy of serving and being more visible to the community. "We don't have the resources that the $1 to $2 billion-dollar credit unions have. And the larger money center banks. We've got to be smart, we've got to be strategic."

Merrill explained how difficult it is to manage a large number of vendors and integrate their products. "It creates operational challenges from the simplest things, such as opening accounts and managing all of the different pieces of technology."

Merrill added the new platform will allow the credit union to consolidate its third-party products. "It is going to allow Inspire to have everything under one umbrella without having a whole host of different vendors like we have now for every piece of our technology," Merrill said. With its NYMBUS platform, Inspire can eliminate between 12 and 15 vendors and contracts in place now – that means dealing with fewer agreements, integrations, middleware and release updates.

"It's open cloud-based technology, and application program interfaces allow for a level of integration we'd never seen or even thought was possible. Now, all of our products and data streams will tie into our core." Merrill said. He added it makes integration not just possible, but easy. "We anticipate significant increases in employee productivity and operational savings as a result. And when the new products come up, we can add them quickly. Our customers will benefit with constant, reliable and convenient access to the modern, digital financial products and services they expect."

Inspire is currently in the midst of implementing NYMBUS' SmartCore; SmartDigital, an internet and mobile suite; and SmartPayments for debit card program management. The credit union expects to spend at least half the year going through the conversion process and then flip the live switch sometime in the third quarter of 2018.

"I can tell you that our entire team here has gone to the demos and have seen how this is going to help us change our operations," Merrill said. "I don't know that there's ever such a thing about being excited about a core conversion because there's a lot of work and a lot of stress. But I can tell you we're excited about the outcome once we get through the process and get there."

Merrill envisions the finished platform as the last big piece the credit union needs to really propel its evolution and achieve some of the goals it has set to move forward.

"We'll soon have a turnkey, scalable core banking solution that allows us to strategically plan for growth – something our old core could not do for us – reaching new members beyond our physical branches and providing the most modern digital experiences for our members," Merrill concluded.