Partners FCU Speeds Up Digital Transformation Journey
The credit union is launching the “Digital 2x” initiative to step up services and capabilities to meet members’ needs faster.
Staying in step with exponential technological development has never been more demanding for credit unions, especially as it relates to the convergence of digital banking, member experience, and competitive challenges.
About 19 months ago, in an effort to keep pace with shifting technology, the $1.8 billion, Burbank, Calif.-based Partners Federal Credit Union − which serves more than 173,000 Walt Disney Company cast members, employees and their families − embarked on a new digital transformation journey.
Their “Digital 2x” initiative focused on stepping up services and capabilities because they believed the pace of delivering new products and features was not meeting members’ needs. “The digital transformation journey was based on us not moving fast enough and feedback from our members and staff and other stakeholders,” John Janclaes, president/CEO for Partners, explained, “We knew we needed to reboot the credit union inside out.”
Partners set its sights on three big initiative goals: change the culture, move twice as fast, and free up capital.
Partners partnered strategically as well to completely overhaul its technologies, processes, systems and services. The organization brought in the Boston Consulting Group and the Austin, Texas-based SaaS digital banking firm Kony to quickly move ahead with its digital overhaul. Partners set an aggressive goal of accelerating the rollout of its enhancements from once every six months. “Eventually, the goal is every month we’re deploying, new significant features to members to keep up with the competition,” Janclaes said.
“It got to a point where they just wanted to push themselves internally to be able to innovate faster and come up with new features and capabilities in digital faster for their members. It’s about an entire culture shift for the management team and by virtue of that, the rest of the organization,” Jeffery Kendall, EVP of North America sales and distribution, Temenos (which completed its acquisition of Kony in September), observed. The Kony perspective was “Let’s go explore this together and help figure out what it takes for an organization to get ready internally to really keep pace with digital these days.”
Temenos Infinity (formerly Kony DBX) − a portfolio of customizable, omnichannel applications, provides the digital backbone for the credit union.
Read more about Partners FCU’s digital transformation journey in the October 30th issue of CU Times.