Partners FCU on Transformation Journey to Keep Up With Tech Changes
The plan revolves around member experience, cast enablement and engagement, safety/soundness and technology enablers.
Keeping up with exponential technological growth has never been more difficult for credit unions, especially when it comes to digital banking, enhancing member experiences and keeping up with the competition.
To try to keep up with the changes needed, the $1.65 billion Burbank, Calif.-based Partners Federal Credit Union, which serves more than 150,000 Walt Disney Company cast members, employees and their families, embarked on a new digital transformation journey.
John Janclaes, president and CEO, Partners Federal Credit Union, explained the credit union’s “Digital 2x” initiative focuses on the credit union’s digital banking services and capabilities, and enhancing its current app offerings, even though Partners already features some tech progressive offerings. They set an aggressive goal of accelerating the roll out of enhancements from once every 6 months to 4 times faster, which means releasing updates every other week.
Their strategic plan has four components that revolve around member experience, cast enablement and engagement, safety and soundness, and providing the right technology enablers. Partners FCU partnered with Austin, Texas-based digital apps company Kony and the Boston Consulting Group, to completely overhaul its technologies, processes, systems and services
“Our vision at Partners Federal Credit Union is to make all financial dreams come true for our cast members. To do so, our velocity of improvement must meet the speed of digital disruption,” Janclaes, said. “Our objective is to ensure we deliver innovative banking services seamlessly across both our digital and physical channels, and not only meet but exceed the expectations of our cast members today and in the future.”
Jeffrey Kendall, SVP of Banking at Kony, explained, “We really view ourselves as a member of the Partners team. The staff and the experts we bring to the table are really there to augment the strategy and be the technical enablers.”
Kony provides Partners with a hosted cloud environment. “That’s an aspect of the technology piece that allows us to accelerate and lower the cost of operating in an agile environment,” Kendall said. “A lot of banks and credit unions are starting to become more comfortable with the idea of us hosting all their solutions, or at least parts of their solution, that need to change and evolve rapidly.”
As part of this initiative, Partners FCU will document its transformative journey in a five-part documentary-style video series highlighting key milestones in the credit union’s digital evolution. Part 1 already debuted and the second is almost ready for primetime.
Read the full article in the April 11 issue of CU Times.