Some credit unions are waiting years to fix broken tech stacks. Others are launching AI tools in a weekend and proving that speed isn’t just about technology, it’s a leadership imperative that affects how credit unions serve, grow, and stay relevant.
In this episode of Grow Your Credit Union, host Joshua Barclay is joined by co-host Becky Reed and guest Pam Cohen, Chief Operating Officer at Affinity Federal Credit Union, to talk about simplifying tech stacks, reducing employee turnover, and using AI to expand financial inclusion.
When Systems Get in the Way of Service
In a Financial Brand article, 80% of financial employees said they want better tools to reduce manual work. Credit union tech stacks are often bloated and disconnected—and frontline employees feel the pain.
Pam says the fix starts with structured onboarding, ongoing training, and what she calls “tech champions” who go deep into systems and help their peers. “The employee experience is the member experience,” she emphasizes.
Becky takes it further: “Most credit unions have 100 different systems. And they’re terrible.” She says credit unions must stop tolerating disjointed tools and start embracing API-driven platforms and AI tools that can be stood up in a weekend. “Things do not have to be this way.”
Why Employees Are Leaving
In a CU Influential white paper, turnover among credit union frontline staff can reach up to 25%. But Pam says Affinity keeps attrition below 10% by listening to employees and investing in their growth.
That includes hiring from retail and fast food, then developing those employees internally. “We used to only hire externally after a certain level. Now we train and develop to bring people up,” she says.
Becky urges credit union leaders to make room for the next generation. “If I’m Gen Z and I don’t see a path up, I’m leaving. The sales cycle is slow, the org chart is flat, and advancement is rare.” Her advice: move faster, make space, and don’t be afraid to get out of the way.
AI and the Future of Financial Inclusion
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 20% of Americans speak a language other than English at home. Affinity used this insight to launch a Spanish-language ChatGPT translation tool and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Pam says it gives members independence. “They can still use branches and call centers, but they also have control over their finances in a way that feels empowering.”
Becky wants to see more credit unions follow suit. “This tech exists. Our app supports 180 languages. Ask members what they need, then build for it. That’s inclusion.” AI isn’t the threat. It’s the unlock.
Top Takeaways from This Episode
- The employee experience is the member experience. Invest accordingly.
- Credit unions must stop tolerating clunky tech stacks and start moving faster.
- Internal growth paths reduce attrition and help retain frontline talent.
- Gen Z won’t wait around for their shot. Make space or lose them.
- AI can make credit unions more inclusive without sacrificing human connection.
Contribute to the Conversation
Have a challenge, question, or topic you’d like us to cover? Whether it’s a merger dilemma, a lending roadblock, or something your board is wrestling with, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out on LinkedIn or email us at info@growyourcreditunion.com.
Full Transcript
Joshua Barclay: Hello, credit union community. Here are your three topics for today’s show. First up, are your employees juggling more systems than they can handle and burning out because of it?
Then we’re breaking down employee turnover. What’s really driving employee attrition inside credit unions? And finally, can AI actually make your credit union more inclusive without losing the human touch?
[Music]
Joshua Barclay: Welcome to Grow Your Credit Union. This is the podcast where credit union leaders gather, learn, and grow. I am your host, Joshua Barclay. Joining me as almost always is my cohost, the talk of Texas, Becky Reed. Becky, welcome.
Becky Reed: Howdy, yawl.
Joshua Barclay: Howdy, Becky. Becky, we did a recording several weeks ago at NCUSO in Vegas, and that was awesome. But I want to ask you about the following presentation, which was you and John Wingate brought up three college students who… I mean they blew my mind.
They developed a program in one weekend, as you said, fueled by Red Bull and pizza. And I just wanted to ask you about do you think the idea of building things quickly can catch on more in the credit union space?
Becky Reed: Well, I just did a post that’s called “Speed Is The New Scale.” So, credit unions have been chasing scale for about a decade now, and I think that that is no longer the correct direction. I think that speed is more important than scale. And in that regard, smaller credit unions have a distinct advantage. Now, as far as the hackathon folks, the average age in the United States is in the mid 30s. Average age of credit unions is 20 years above that.
Average age of a C suite in a credit union is older still. And the average age of the board room is even older than that. And so we have a problem in this industry, and it’s called generational blindness. Now, that particular event, that panel at NICUSO at the underground event, there was not a dry in the eye house when those kids were talking.
And those kids were so excited to build technology for credit unions, community based financial institutions that were owned by the people in the community. That blew their mind.
So, while they were blowing our mind, we were blowing theirs with the fact that credit unions even exist. And being able to build something in 30 hours is absolutely possible, and we’re going to be talking about AI later. So, let’s talk about the enablement that AI provides to us as financial institutions. And so, yes, I think it’s relevant. Yes, I think it’s important. And yes, most credit unions will listen, and some credit unions will adapt it and try to change.
Joshua Barclay: Well, all I can say, Becky, is after their talk, I felt maybe I should have done a little bit more studying in high school and college. But I digress. We have a really good show. Today we welcome the chief administrative officer at Affinity Federal Credit Union, Pam Cohen. Pam, welcome to the show.
Pam Cohen: Hi. Nice to be here. Thank you.
[Music]
Joshua Barclay: If you think airline pilots have a lot of systems to manage in the cockpit, try being a frontline employee at a credit union. Yes, you did hear me right. Many credit union employees juggle multiple systems daily, often without seamless integration. And in fact, according to the Financial Brand, 80% of financial employees want better tools that reduce manual work and streamline operations.
So, Pam, my question for you, what can credit unions do to support new hires and protect the employee experience when their tech stack feels really overwhelming?
Pam Cohen: I mean credit union employees do wear a lot of hats. And like you said, if the tech stack doesn’t really talk to itself it creates frustration on the employees’ parts. And I think what we tend to forget sometimes is that the employee experience is the same as the member experience when it comes to technology and the tech stack. So, we’re working really hard to simplify our systems where we can to make sure that people feel supported in learning them. I wouldn’t expect everybody to master every system all at once. We’ve spent a lot of time on some structured onboarding, some ongoing training.
Because technology changes, or things get upgraded. And we’ve also put together what we call tech champions, and those technology champions are the ones that really do the deep dive into the system and can help the rest of the team. But it is an absolute total team effort and a group effort, and I think that sometimes, as Becky said opening up, sometimes as leaders, as you get up the ladder, you forget what it’s like to be down in the frontlines. And those are your most critical people.
They’re the ones helping to create the member experience. So, if we don’t hear them or allow them a way to really tell us the truth then we’re going to be focusing on the wrong things.
Joshua Barclay: I like that. I like that you have a champion in house to really get people onboarded on the tools. That is a very good little tidbit of advice for folks. Becky, you know all too well about these systems. I can’t recall… You might have mentioned how many different systems a credit union has. I think you’ve said it many times. But how do you support new hires? Because there’s a lot of stuff to learn, and it’s got to be frustrating.
Becky Reed: Well, first of all, you need to get rid of the disparate systems that don’t talk to each other. So, if that’s not on your technology roadmap, it needs to be because, frankly, things don’t have to be this way. They really don’t. In today’s day and age with the technology that is really truly available, things do not have to be this way. But credit unions, a lot of times, don’t understand really what the availability is, or they think it’s too expensive, or too complicated, or a security risk, or whatever the case may be. But the reason we’re not attracting new members is because our systems are exactly what you were just talking about.
They’re terrible. They’re terrible. And if a gen Z employee is having a hard time, think about what a gen Z member is going to experience. And it’s not good. One of the things that we did at Lone Star was had a mantra that a better employee experience leads to a better member experience. And Pam talked about that. And I think that’s really important to remember.
We kind of just get used to it, and we go, “Well, that’s just how we have to do things.” But, guys, you do not have to do things that way. And by the way, Joshua, it’s 100. Most credit unions have 100 different systems that they use, and almost all of those have their own interface that you have to log into to interact with.
Joshua Barclay: I guess then, Becky, the solution would be we reinvent the tech stack instead of a side credit union. But in the near term, that doesn’t seem possible this year for most credit unions or next year, for that matter. So, is there another solution that you see that can temporarily solve this? Or is it really just a matter of, “You’re going to have to deal with all these systems until we get these solutions in sync?”
Becky Reed: Well, Joshua, funny you should ask. Because guess what?
[Laughter]
Becky Reed: The company that I work for, Bank Social… And you didn’t know this before you asked the question. But guess what? We have that. And it is following the lines of opening banking. So, choose your own API from a member perspective, and your core system should be agile enough to be able to adapt to that. Now, that might sound like science fiction to a lot of credit union people, but using that hackathon mentality that we touched on earlier and combining the power of AI, which is not expensive, guys…
And you can have a private AI model that is not sharing any of your credit union data out into the internet. You can buy those things that really inexpensive price point. And as a matter of fact, if you would like to try some of our models that we have trained, give me a call. We can provide those to you to work with your finance department, your risk mitigation department, your compliance department, etc.
But using AI, we were able to build a really, really cool thing in about that 30-hour time period that we talked about, that the hackathon students did. So, again, credit unions. If you want to remain relevant to your employees and your members, you’ve got to do things quicker because that is the world in which we live. These MIT students, these Brown students, these Harvard students that we do these hackathons with, they are building stuff in 30 hours. And so their mindset is, “Why can’t my financial institution do that?”
[Music]
Joshua Barclay: Employee attrition, it remains pretty high inside of credit unions. In fact, I talked to a credit union leader who said she lost a frontline employee to a fast food restaurant. No, I’m not making that up, and, no, she didn’t tell me which fast food restaurant. So, there is data that does indicate that turnover rates can reach up to 25% for frontline employees, with back office staff experiencing turnover rates around 11%.
That’s according to a white paper from CU Influential. Pam, given these stats, I want to get to the bottom of this. Why are so many employees leaving credit unions? Why are credit unions struggling to retain talent?
Pam Cohen: At Affinity, our turnover rate is less than 10%. It’s in the single digits. And I think a lot of that has to do with culture, with trust, with being heard. But we get a lot of our employees, our frontline employees, from fast food places or other retail outlets just because of the service experience. We know we can provide a better employee experience. There is a lot of systems they have to learn that they may not have to learn at some place else. But at the end of the day, being transparent, listening to employees, creating a way to recognize employees…
We try to promote everybody internally first before we look external. That isn’t always the way it works. It used to be that at a certain level, we’d only hire outside. Now we train and develop to bring people up. Looking at what they want to do for a career. It’s not just once you’re in a branch you’re always going to be in a branch. You have to listen to your employees.
And, again, as we get older, we don’t want to become irrelevant and think that we know what’s best for our employees. So, creating that culture of trust and transparency I think is really key.
Joshua Barclay: I know that would make me feel good if I worked there and you were looking to move people up internally. I know that if you went outside to get people, eventually I would feel a little bit alienated for sure, so I do like that particular tactic. Becky, you have a lot of thoughts on this, as you do many topics. But where have all the CU employees gone?
Becky Reed: Let’s go back to Gen Z for a minute. Gen Z… So, I call the member facing employees…the entry level employees at a credit union, I call them foundational employees. They are the foundation of the organization because those folks are really the face of the credit union to the members that they’re helping.
And most of the time because it is an entry level position, it’s a lower paid position. It requires less experience than other positions in the credit union. That’s where people come in and start. And I’m going to talk about speed again for a minute, and let’s talk about the average age of a C suite.
Let’s talk about the average age of mid level managers even or in between mid level and C suite like VPs, and directors, and that sort of thing. Guess what? Those people aren’t leaving. They’re staying for decades upon decades upon decades.
And if I’m a gen Z person and I come in and I start at your credit union, and I’m in my position for three years, I want to move up. I want to get promoted. I want to somewhere else. And maybe I’m a mid level manager who’s been at the credit union for 15 years, and I want to have an opportunity to move into a VP position, or an SVP, or an EVP, or director, or something like that.
A department head. And my only opportunity to do that in the short term is to go somewhere else. Because our organizations are so flat and there is generally a lot of movement. Now, I can tell you, I’ve been hearing since the ‘80s that the baby boomers are leaving, and there’s all these executive positions that are available. Really? Really? Because I think most people in credit union land are not seeing that themselves. So, we have to move quicker.
We have to provide Gen Z and millennials who are mid career at this point opportunities to advance. And so what I’m going to tell you guys… Oh, here we go. Controversial moment, right? Get out of the way.
Joshua Barclay: Get out of the way. And, Becky, to that point, you said organizations are flat. So, you’re saying a younger employee maybe will come in and just sit in almost an entry level positions for too long and then feel like, “I’m not going anywhere here. I’m taking off.” That’s a big part of this?
Becky Reed: Well, yeah. When I started, five years in a position was like… That was great. You got lots of experience. You got to do a lot of things. But today, everything moves quicker. Everything moves quicker. You can get an AI answer. You can write a paper in seconds now. But you’re going to require a teller to wait five years before she can even get a head teller position, or he?
It makes no sense. So, the time in which it takes to advance folks needs to speed up. And that could mean, to Pam’s point, that you are enabling them with additional responsibilities. Maybe they’re not actually getting a new title, but maybe they’re doing more. They’re learning more. They’re engaged more. They’re involved in other things. That can happen, too. Like for example, the tech guru that she talked about.
That’s a great opportunity for an employee to gain more experience outside of their role but still be in the role. But we just… We’ve got to move quicker. We’ve got to move quicker because they’re going to go some place else.
[Music]
Joshua Barclay: The credit union movement was built on inclusivity, which is key to its future. Today, about one in five people in the US speak a language other than English. So, to meet that need, Affinity launched a ChatGPT [Inaudible 00:16:18] website translation tool starting with Spanish.
So, Pam, this is very cool. I want to know… Many credit unions are hesitant to use AI due to concerns around risk, or losing the human touch, or blah, blah, blah. Name your excuse. There’s plenty of them. So, what I want to know, Pam, is how has your Spanish speaking members responded to this tool so far?
Pam Cohen: First, I want to put in a shameless plug for our marketing department because this was actually their idea, and it’s been phenomenal. So, our members…our Spanish speaking members have been really, really positive about it because it gives them some independence, and it gives them independence when they’re managing their finances.
And that’s always…having a member feel some control over their finances while you’re potentially in the background coaching them is what we really want. But, again, having them be able to control their finances and not rely on others has been great. They can still use the branches, the call center, all of that. We’re looking at going into our next language based on our membership needs.
But I think if people are truly, truly afraid of the risk or whatever is fearful of them, put that aside, and the first thing you need to do is look at what’s the need. What do our members need? And then how do we fulfill that need? And that’s really how we handled it.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, your book. Great book by the way. I think everyone in the credit union movement should read it. But it really goes into the history of the credit union movement and how it really was built around community and inclusivity. So, Becky, I want to know… You’re so big on AI and cutting edge technology. How do you see AI playing a role in this inclusivity movement going into the future?
Becky Reed: Almost in every way. I mean working at a fintech now, I get to have a front row seat to seeing what kinds of technologies are available out there just in general, not just in the financial institution space. But there are models… Our app does it. Our Bank Social app is global. And it is customized based on geolocation to present the information inside the app in your native language if you so choose. 180 of them. That’s how powerful this technology is these days.
Credit unions should be adopting that. Now, here in the United States, that’s a little more challenging because someone might be a first language Spanish, second language English, but they’re in Texas, and so you wouldn’t necessarily know. But you could ask them, “Would you prefer to do your business with us in English or Spanish?” There are credit unions out there that serve specific ethnic groups that maybe speak Polish or are in Ukraine, are in Vietnam.
Different areas like that where this could be helpful. But AI is just a tool. It is just a tool to help us. But it can absolutely help. Think about the in branch experience that Pam kind of talked about. So, this ChatGPT experience is a little more through the computer, but now I can have someone at my desk, and… But we have Google Translate on our phone, right? Just put the phone right there and let it translate between the two people, and now we’re actually communicating.
Whereas before, there was miscommunication, misunderstanding. And so speaking of inclusion, people who might have otherwise been uncomfortable coming into a financial institution because they weren’t sure they were going to be able to communicate affectively can now feel more comfortable. And so Pam’s credit union should double down. She said her marketing department came up with it, which is awesome.
Because that means the marketing department is going to be able to spread the word about it. Tell people about it. Tell the community, “When you come in here we speak your language.” I mean, how awesome is that? And that is the credit union difference.
Joshua Barclay: Yeah. It really is. A couple things. Really good points here. I think Pam started with it. Is think about the use cases. And I think, Becky, you’ve got to be frustrated with some people because they’re thinking about the technology first and the use cases second. It’s like relax here. Think about how we need to use this tech.
Then we’ll figure out the technology. And I love that you mentioned that, Pam, because the way that you’ve used it is very clever and very useful, and it speaks to the movement. And I think too many people get lost in the hype of AI, and they’re not thinking about use cases first. Let’s address use cases, then figure out the technology. Becky, Pam, I think you both touched on some really important things there.
That brings us to the end of the show. Pam, I’m wondering, do you have any final thoughts, or plugs, or anything you’d love to mention here?
Pam Cohen: Well, if you’re in the northeast, Affinity Federal Credit Union is an awesome place to bank. But I do think I will second what Becky said. We have to move quicker. We have to stay relevant. And we have to keep our members and our communities top of mind. Without that, there’s no reason for us to be here.
Joshua Barclay: Pam, if listeners want to get ahold of you, what’s the best way they can get in touch with you?
Pam Cohen: Through my email, which is pamelac@affinityFCU.com.
Joshua Barclay: Thank you, Pam. And, Becky, final thoughts, plugs, words of wisdom.
Becky Reed: Speed is the new scale. I’m going to say that again. I said it earlier. Speed is the new scale. So, credit union folks, when you’re out there thinking about… And, look, I know… We have 100 vendors, and we’re looking at adding 100 more. Right? It doesn’t have to be that way because that slows us down.
Disparate systems and disjointed systems, siloed systems, that’s kind of the world we live in today. But we’re moving towards a more connected world. And the youth in our world right now is already connected in ways that those of us that are a little older really can’t even imagine. And so if we want to be as nimble as gen Z, we have to start acting nimble and start looking at reducing our inefficient systems and our reliance on those systems to just move faster.
So, one thing here at Bank Social that I’ve learned, the sales cycle… And this is for a lot of CUSOs, because I work with a lot of CUSOs, too. I’m the former board chairman of NICUSO. I’ve interacted with lots of different companies that are interacting with credit unions.
And all of them say that the sales cycle in credit unions is just too long. So, by waiting a year to sign a contract, or 12 months, or 18 months, to just look at it or maybe see if it fits on your strategic plan next year, you’re missing out. You’re losing. So, think faster, be faster.
Joshua Barclay: And, Becky, how can people get ahold of you if they’re listening to this and they’re thinking, “I do want to move faster, Becky? How do I get in touch with you?”
Becky Reed: LinkedIn, baby.
Joshua Barclay: Pam, I want to thank you for coming on the show. I want to give a special thanks to Becky, my cohost, for always bringing the heat. And I want to thank our listeners for continuing to support and listen to another episode of Grow Your Credit Union.
Remember, if you dig the show, please follow us on your podcast player of choice and share an episode with somebody who would dig it. If you wanna be a guest or would like to talk about sponsorship opportunities, head to growyourcreditunion.com to learn more. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next time. Take care. Bye, bye.
