Velera’s ‘Go Forward Approach’ in a Post-Merger World
Months of internal work has resulted in a new product journey for its clients.
There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work when it comes to combining two longtime CUSOs. Last year’s merger announcement of PSCU and Co-op Solutions resulted in months of work combining teams, internal systems and products and services offered by both organizations as they combined into one CUSO, now known as Velera.
Earlier this week, CU Times spoke with Velera’s SVP of Product Enablement and Growth, Cody Banks, to talk about how Velera is now positioning itself to clients and the industry as it moves forward as one entity.
On Monday, according to Banks, Velera began presenting its new product journey to clients. He stated what he called Velera’s “go forward approach” as combining products and services around the credit union experience and the member experience.
The following interview excerpt between CU Times and Banks was lightly edited for style and space.
To begin, Banks explained the credit union experience approach.
Banks: ”So within the credit union experience, you know, we’ve got a couple of different things, right? One, how do we streamline your operations? How do we make it more efficient to do business, to interact with your members, whether they’re calling into the contact center or stepping into a branch? We really want to optimize those operations. And two, how do we help them? How do we make and keep them competitive? How do we help them grow their membership?”
CU Times: And the member experience side?
Banks: ”One, how do we deliver connected experiences? How do we make sure that the digital native members are able to do their business frictionless, seamless, easy, convenient, through channels like mobile and online, and payment methods like buy now, pay later and things of that nature; as well as connecting those who like to come into a branch through shared branch, through the network, through those types of activities.
“And then we also look at the protection. How are we protecting the member and the credit union through prevention, detection, consulting and recovery? So that’s essentially what we’re announcing today at a high level.”
CU Times: How long did it take you to come up with this new product journey?
Banks: ”So it sort of predates a little bit the announcement back in November, but we’ve been really working at the better part of a good six to seven months, really looking through our product stack. Both storied, 40-year companies coming together, we had some overlap, right? For instance, we both offer this product, [let’s] take a look and see which one is better from a speed, technology and risk standpoint — and then, and most importantly, the client. What are the clients telling us? What are they interested in buying? What are they interested in having support around? And so that really has kind of helped form our decisions, our criteria of what we wanted to ultimately go to the market with.”
CU Times: Is this impacting all of Velera’s business plans?
Banks: ”So it is impacting every product at Velera. We’ve got about 200 different products that we support today collectively at Velera. And so, we’ve made some decisions, again with the input of our clients and our internal stakeholders. And so essentially what we will do is we will roll out those, go forward, a hundred or so products that we are moving forward with to the market in one of those four categories:
“Is it connecting member experiences? So things like shared branch and building a business solution and, you know, buy now, pay later.
“Is it protecting a member, you know, through disputes and recovery or through the tools that really augment the fraud and connect those layers.
“Is streamlining the operations? So making sure we’ve got that credit union UI tool that they can service those members in branch or over the phone.
“Or is it more tailored to growth? So rewards and loyalty and predictive analytics and consulting and campaigns and how we’re growing a lending origination. So all of those four categories are how we will start to roll out those products and decisions to our clients.”
Banks made an underlying point “as many credit unions are going through these types of mergers and acquisitions themselves, it’s so important for us to make sure that as we invest, that we’re going to continue to invest and we’re not going dark.”
He added, “We’ve already got a few different projects going on right now, and so really how we’re talking about this to our clients is: We’re modernizing our technology. We are a cloud-forward technology group that is really going to help enable those experiences from our credit unions to compete with the fintech and the bank down the street. So [we are] really trying to meet the moment and getting those things all pulled together. That’s the plan.”