Three Credit Union CEOs Detail Their Digital Strategies for 2025
From major credit unions like PenFed to smaller institutions like Texas Trust and EFCU Financial, credit unions across the country are betting their budgets on digital upgrades, as they pursue growth among both existing and new members.
By Matt Doffing, Senior Editor at The Financial Brand
Pentagon Federal Credit Union is staffing up its data, privacy and artificial intelligence teams, as part of its pursuit of hyper-personalization. Texas Trust Credit Union intends to launch a new digital account-opening process and roll out Zelle.
And at EFCU Financial Federal Credit Union, the strategic initiatives include an internal ChatGPT-like tool to support its team with accurate information as needed, along with preparations for a core system conversion.
As these three credit unions illustrate, the focus for many financial institutions in the coming year is upgrading their members’ digital experience. But the path to progress is different for each one.
PenFed, with $32.7 billion in assets, is one of the largest credit unions in the country, and it has more than 450,000 member logins to its digital channels every day. "About 95% of our engagements are digitally self-service," says James Schenck, its president and chief executive officer.
PenFed wants to uplevel those already advanced digital tools to incorporate greater use of artificial intelligence. The intent is to make digital banking "more predictive and anticipatory," Schenck says.
The $1.1 billion-asset EFCU Financial also wants to improve its digital channels, with greater personalization among the goals. While it may be playing catch-up compared to much larger credit unions like PenFed, it is taking on a multiyear mission that includes some massive projects.
"Historically, we’ve underinvested in this area, which is why 2025 will bring significant transformation," says Tom Kuslikis, who joined EFCU Financial as the president and CEO in September 2023.
Already the credit union has a newly launched account-opening process that takes just a few minutes. It also has a new consumer and mortgage loan origination system. And looking further ahead, it is preparing for a conversion of its core system that is expected to go live in late 2026.
"This renewed focus reflects a leadership shift and the shared commitment of our board and senior team to provide a world-class member experience," Kuslikis says.
Texas Trust introduced a new digital banking platform in 2024, and it plans to build on that milestone by implementing a faster and simpler account-opening process that eliminates some of the manual review happening now. It is also partnering with Zest AI to streamline the loan process and automate more decisions. And it is working with Zelle to bring the person-to-person payment service to its members.
Texas Trust CEO Jim Minge says he feels especially hopeful about these investments, given that interest rates are moderating. "We expect 2025 to be a year where we return to a more robust pace of growth, and we expect that continued improvements in our digital experience will add fuel to our growth opportunities."
Read on to learn more about the strategies these credit unions are counting on to deepen relationships with existing members and attract new ones.
Pursuing Digital Excellence at Texas Trust
Jim Minge
Chief executive officer
Texas Trust Credit Union (HQ: Mansfield, Tex.)
Asset size: $2 billion
What is Texas Trust’s top priority for 2025?
We are in year two of an initiative to modernize and simplify the experience for members who approach us digitally.
We used to be a company whose digital channel supported in-person services. Over the last several years, this has reversed. As a result, we have a major focus on improving our digital delivery.
In 2024, we introduced an all-new digital platform to our members.
What factors make this priority stand out in your mind above all the other competing interests?
The world learned during the COVID pandemic that the digital channel can be used for almost everything. Consumers changed habits quickly.
We had an acceptable digital platform but had not invested in it to make it great. Additionally, we had not used the most modern tools to make our digital delivery easy and seamless for our members.
We know that we must invest digitally in order to continue to grow and help our members.
"We used to be a company whose digital channel supported in-person services. Over the last several years, this has reversed."
— Jim Minge, Texas Trust
Please describe a few of the initiatives you’ll be executing as an institution in support of this priority in 2025.
Payments: With person-to-person money transfers using Zelle, we will make it much easier for our members to make payments to others. We anticipate that we will have Zelle rolled out on our mobile application in the first quarter of 2025.
Loans: We are investing in artificial intelligence to help us automate more loan decisions. Our partner Zest AI will help us give decisions to more members faster and streamline the process for getting a loan from us.
Accounts: Our current digital account-opening process and system are not providing the level of service that we expect to our members. We are looking at the most modern tools to take our account opening experience to the next level and position ourselves for the future.
Financial literacy: To support our effort to build brighter financial futures, we are investing in financial literacy training for more of our staff. Our goal is to have expert staff who can meet a member where they are and provide them with the advice, products and services they need to thrive. We will also continue to provide financial education to our local community through schools and not-for-profit partnerships.
Would you characterize this as a change in the credit union’s strategy over the past year or an extension of it?
None of these initiatives are a major shift from our 2024 focus. We see 2025 as another step in our journey to digital excellence.
How will you measure success in achieving this priority? If all goes well, what does that look like for Texas Trust Credit Union a year from now?
We will measure success in many ways. Primarily, are we growing and helping more members in our communities?
Specifically, we would like to see the following:
- Seeing many members taking advantage of the new Zelle channel to transfer money at their convenience.
- We expect Zest AI to help us drastically increase the number of loans automatically approved and also help us move more loans from approved to finalized.
- Modern digital account opening will help us decrease the number of account applications that are abandoned during the opening process. We also expect that easy and convenient funding options will ultimately result in more funded and active accounts.
With the recent reduction in interest rates, the Fed is indicating that we are nearing the end of a tight money period. We expect 2025 to be a year where we return to a more robust pace of growth and we expect that continued improvements in our digital experience will add fuel to our growth opportunities.
Can you share some color on the improvements planned for the digital account opening process?
Basically, our current digital account opening product takes too long and requires the member to enter too much information.
It also requires us to take several manual steps and review every account to combat fraud. Many of these manual steps require us to exchange documents with the member. The process is less than seamless.
Additionally, the steps required to fund a newly approved account that we currently employ do not allow for an easy transfer from another institution.
The new system uses a modern fraud detection system featuring several layers of synthetic identity verification tools. This will allow us to manually review a much lower percentage of applications. These tools also allow us to verify members identity without the manual back and forth we currently experience. Funding will also be tremendously improved using modern tools to transfer from another account or a credit/debit card.
We hope to make the process for new account opening so easy that a member can go from start to a fully funded account in 10 to15 minutes.
Read more:
- How to Reverse Slipping Customer Engagement at Credit Unions
- The Biggest Opportunities for Credit Union Marketing
PenFed Staffs Up to Tackle Hyper-Personalization
James Schenck
President and chief executive officer
Pentagon Federal Credit Union (HQ: McLean, Va.)
Asset size: $32.7 billion
What is PenFed’s top priority for 2025?
PenFed’s top priority is continuing our digital transformation. We are focusing on hyper-personalization and hyper-automation and building out our data, privacy and AI governance teams.
With 95% of our engagements being digitally self-service, PenFed receives over 450,000 member logins per day and the ability to provide real-time highly personalized information that the member needs and desires with end-to-end digitization is our core focus. To do it safely, governance and internal infrastructure are essential.
What factors make this priority stand out in your mind above all the other competing interests?
The American consumer has rapidly transitioned to accessing financial services via mobile and web anytime, anywhere in the world. PenFed continues our commitment to providing our members with a best-in-class experience that is unmatched by the top banks; we are very proud to currently have a 4.7 Apple app store rating.
In 2025, there will be continued use of vastly improved, AI-enabled chatbot and self-directed/self-service tools to provide enhanced member experience — not only in financial services, but across all industries. It’s what consumers will come to expect and their safety and security while accessing these capabilities must be top of mind for all responsible financial providers.
Please describe a few of the initiatives you’ll be executing on as an institution in support of this priority in 2025.
PenFed plans to test and implement loyalty management; integrated-payments for seamless money movement; AI-based solutions that make digital banking more predictive and anticipatory in nature to continue to handle call triage; collections and propensity modeling to provide faster service to the member and greater efficiency to the institution. We will be approaching all enhancements with a deliberate, risk-aware lens, while conscious of member privacy and information security.
Would you characterize this as a change in the credit union’s strategy compared with the past year or an extension of it?
This is a continuation of the current PenFed approach but will require more depth and breadth of personnel and technology resources, as appropriate to the governance required for these new technological innovations.
How will you measure success in achieving this priority? If all goes well, what does that look like for PenFed Credit Union a year from now?
Success will be measured ultimately by our members, who are able each day to select new credit unions or banks to meet their needs. Retaining our membership, investing continuously in their information security and privacy rights, and thrilling them with secure, reliable, intuitive, and personalized banking services on their platform of choice — from in-person to web-based and mobile banking options — is our ultimate measure of success.
Read more: How a Chicago Credit Union Became a Personalization Powerhouse
‘Significant Transformation’ Coming to EFCU Financial
Tom Kuslikis
President and chief executive officer
EFCU Financial Federal Credit Union (HQ: Baton Rouge, La.)
Asset size: $1.1 billion
What is EFCU Financial’s top priority for 2025?
Technology and the member experience is going to be a big focus of ours not only next year but for the next five-plus years.
What factors make this priority stand out in your mind above all the other competing interests?
Member expectations have evolved, and we must stay ahead of them. Consumers now expect the personalized, seamless experiences they enjoy with companies like Amazon and Netflix. To attract new members and deepen engagement with our current ones, we need to deliver a similar level of convenience and personalization. Historically, we’ve underinvested in this area, which is why 2025 will bring significant transformation.
Fourteen months into my tenure as CEO, this renewed focus reflects a leadership shift and the shared commitment of our board and senior team to provide a world-class member experience.
"Member expectations have evolved, and we must stay ahead of them."
— Tom Kuslikis, EFCU Financial
Please describe a few of the initiatives you’ll be executing on as an institution in support of this priority in 2025.
In 2025, we will focus on integrating several transformative initiatives to enhance both member and team experiences.
- Our newly launched account-opening process allows potential members to open accounts in just 2 to 3 minutes, setting a new standard for convenience.
- We’ll complete upgrades to our loan origination systems, including a new consumer and mortgage LOS, following the successful upgrade of our indirect channel this year.
- Additionally, we’re introducing voice chat functionality for contact center calls, an internal ChatGPT-like tool to provide team members with consistent, accurate support and a streamlined loan application process.
- Preparations will also begin for our core system and digital banking conversion, scheduled for Q4 2026.
Would you characterize this as a change in the credit union’s strategy compared with the past year or an extension of it?
2025 marks a significant shift from 2024.
We’ve recognized that expectations around technology and personalization have evolved across all demographics, particularly among younger generations. With trillions of dollars set to transfer to younger generations in the coming decades, and our institution currently relying heavily on deposits from older members, it’s critical that we provide an experience designed to attract and engage the next generation of members. This shift is essential to ensuring our long-term relevance and growth in an increasingly competitive financial landscape.
How will you measure success in achieving this priority? If all goes well, what does that look like for EFCU Financial a year from now?
An important indicator will be an increased share of our members’ overall banking relationships, reflecting the impact of these changes. Additionally, attracting a younger demographic to the credit union will be a key goal, and we’ll closely monitor and analyze data to determine if this shift is taking place as expected.
