Kurt Vonnegut, the ‘Contactless Society’ & Credit Union Technology

Today, we are all adapting to the constraints of COVID culture, reinterpreting our work and work relationships, and somehow, simultaneously addressing the changing needs of our communities. The competitive landscape is a blur. Bringing it back into focus will require creative responses to three core questions:

• What are relevant credit union experiences in the COVID or post-COVID world? Must relevant experiences be limited to traditional financial products and services?
• How will you recreate a sense of place, belonging and community – the character and qualities that have always distinguished credit unions from their bank rivals?
• How will your organization use the data you possess to drive community-wide economic health, making your institution the gravitational center of a vibrant economic and social future?

In another place and time, Kurt Vonnegut, author of “Slaughterhouse-Five” and several plays and works of non-fiction, described relevant experiences and community within his economic routine. In an interview with Vonnegut published in the November 1995 issue of Inc. Technology, he recounted small details and thoughts about people he encountered while completing the mundane task of buying an envelope from a newsstand and mailing a set of marked-up manuscript pages to a woman in Woodstock, N.Y. “I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home,” he said in concluding his story. “And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

Vonnegut cultivated meaning through simple, daily interactions. He went out of his way to weave together these relationships because they provided insight into the experiences of others. These shared experiences anchored place and community for Vonnegut. He cherished the analogue world. And Vonnegut was a master of it.

In experience, there is truth.

Today, we are all navigating a strangely alien environment. Our experiences are constrained and limited. They’re too limited on a personal level and professionally as well. These constraints threaten your ability to distinguish your institution from its rivals.

For example, in industry vernacular, during the pre-COVID era, “contactless” described point-of-sale systems. Now, contactless defines nearly every aspect of our lives – not only those distant times when we minimized contact by tilting a phone at a POS terminal! Our awkward new reality eliminates many of the experiences that defined your credit union, replacing them with relatively impersonal, standardized and remote routines. These commodified systems and processes are convenient and efficient, but they are also homogenous. They highlight similarities among financial institutions while obscuring the differences between them.

The platforms and channels built for the pre-COVID era, hamstrung from the start by their proprietary architecture and stand-alone data silos, are now completely anachronistic. The antithesis of relevance, platforms and channels resist your efforts to knit back together community and drive local financial health.

How your organization interprets your COVID-era data – gaining insight into the experiences of others – and responds to this new reality can be assessed by your progress on our three core questions.

What are relevant credit union experiences in the COVID world? Expand your vision of consumer pain and delight. Rather than considering only the positive and negative impacts of financial products and processes, consider your members’ experiences beyond credit union operations. Broaden your horizon to include those experiences adjacent to “banking” that your organization could even possibly innovate. There are precedents. Recently, Nutmeg Federal Credit Union began transacting certain Connecticut State DMV products and services. Suddenly, Nutmeg’s “branch of the future” is here, and it rests in the hand of just about every driver in the state of Connecticut.

How will you create a sense of place, belonging and community? Many large financial institutions are already pulling back from local markets. This trend will accelerate. And “nature abhors a vacuum.” Ensure that your credit union is the gravitational center of your communities, with all possible data – including their attendant, human characters – orbiting your credit union. This opportunity will also require expanding your vision of the possible. Remember Vonnegut. Within the ones and zeros of your data are insights and connections that create real delight. Build more dynamic networks, speed interaction and, in doing so, accelerate the velocity of money in your markets.

How will you use data to drive economic health? It is becoming increasingly clear that local businesses are facing a mass extinction event. The next online banking “solution” is already irrelevant. A sexier mobile tool or even a well-located, boutique branch will not improve the economic fortunes of your business or individual members. What is needed now is a “digital commons,” a vibrant, engaging hub – a “virtual” community as real and intimate as the one that founded your credit union. This expanding community will be powered by seamless access to the credit union’s digital tools and data insights. These resources will be essential to the economic health of the shared community.

Like Vonnegut’s example, in another place and time, credit union origin stories described a handful of founders sitting around a table, pooling their cash, building capital over time and lending money to ever more members. Today, those principals are unchanged; the atmosphere and the tools are completely different. Now, in addition to cash, the shoebox is filled with data and sharing that data is the path of financial flourishing.

Pivoting to compete in this new environment means eliminating platforms and channels and centralizing data to reignite your economic ecosphere and to expand it. This alien atmosphere can support life and greater economic prosperity – once your credit union makes the shift to consolidate and control data, and share it with its members.

Matt Purvis is Principal of Purvis Management in Eugene, Ore.