Small credit union is reshaping daily operations with AI
Small credit unions often must rely on out-of-the-box technology built by someone else. StagePoint Federal Credit Union in Laramie, Wyo., decided to build its own instead, developing one of the more ambitious small credit union AI programs almost entirely in-house, as detailed by a recent America's Credit Unions Blog post.
The community-chartered cooperative, serving about 9,000 members with a $130-million balance sheet, has moved underwriting, its knowledge base, vendor reviews, fraud tracking, and even staff performance reviews onto AI. In about two years’ time, President/CEO Tyler Valentine assembled many of the dashboards himself. The credit union runs its custom tools on an internal server walled off from the internet, with no member data in the system, and Valentine estimates one vendor-management dashboard alone saves him 20 to 30 hours a year.
Valentine says the tools StagePoint FCU built created efficiencies with automated notices of missed deadlines and needed action, and also enabled staff to have more confidence with the level of information they have readily available to them. The credit union is already looking ahead to AI developments in accounting and possible member-facing chat and phone support.
"AI is here, it's not coming, it is here," Valentine said. He recommends peers adopt solutions that will help them serve their members now and into the future. “We’ve been around for 91 years. We want to be here for the next 91.”
This story and more are available on the America’s Credit Unions Blog webpage.
Advertisement
