Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

A $3.2 billion credit union chooses its digital partners from member surveys, and the results show.

Chartway Credit Union runs $3.2 billion in assets and serves 265,000 members, yet it brought in $2 million in CD deposits in under 45 days without leading on rate. It segmented members with known excess liquidity, reached them with a personalized Pulsate push, and took them through one-tap Entersekt authentication straight into account opening and funding. Esteban Guerra explains why a batch email and a trip to the branch would have lost a large share of those members along the way, and why the targeting kept the money from behaving like hot money.

The method behind it starts with members. Chartway surveys them, builds its roadmap from what they ask for, then searches Q2's Innovation Studio and checks references with credit unions on a similar stack before choosing a partner. With 85% of members on the mobile app and roughly 1.7 million logins a month, any partner that adds friction to mobile doesn't make the cut. And the feedback flows both ways: Chartway takes what members tell it back to its partners, and it often ends up on their roadmaps.

Speed has changed the math for smaller institutions. Work that took six to nine months now takes weeks, and Chartway had ScribeUp subscription management in a production pilot in under two weeks. During a fraud spike it added background authentication rather than friction and cut manual reviews by 40%. Esteban, whose credit union was named Q2's 2026 Credit Union of the Year, closes with advice for banks and credit unions earlier in the journey: start with your members, invest in your people, and do the due diligence.

About the series: The Experience Factor is a special Banking Transformed series with Q2, recorded at Q2 CONNECT 2026 in Austin, Texas, featuring consumer banking experts and financial institution leaders on how account holder experience and engagement drive long-term success.

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

Agentic AI: Powering the Self-Driving Bank: https://www.digitalbankingreport.com/trends/agentic-ai-powering-the-self-driving-bank/

A bank or credit union that judges Meta's Muse by whether it moves deposits is watching the wrong risk. Within about 10 days of launch, Muse was the most downloaded free app on the iPhone, and it reads customer accounts through Plaid.

Meta's chief AI officer has challenged people to see whether Muse can find them $1,000, and the Muse Money Challenge gives customers a low-risk reason to connect their accounts. A forgotten subscription or a lower bill is a small win, but small wins build a habit. Each useful result makes it easier for a customer to bring the agent a bigger question, from which credit card to use to where to borrow for a major purchase, and none of that requires moving a single deposit.

In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous builds on his earlier video, The Agentic Bank Run. Many observers, including the chief economist at Apollo, are now warning that AI agents could pull low-cost deposits out of checking accounts. Jim argues that deposit flight may be the last thing to move. The earlier exposure is influence over the decisions that grow a relationship, including the lending side of the balance sheet, where Plaid's liabilities data gives an agent a view of card and loan balances.

Jim closes with five practical moves for a bank or credit union: testing Muse internally, alerting customers when a recurring bill increases, reviewing customer borrowing before an agent does, giving branch and contact center staff the tools and authority to respond to an agent's comparison, and running a 30-day money challenge that puts a real person behind the help. Most of these moves rely on data the institution already holds, and the episode is candid about what that data can and cannot tell you about a customer's next financial decision.

About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at digitalbankingreport.com.

Bank and credit union leaders are misjudging what frustrates their customers most, and the fix starts with leaders hearing those customers firsthand. In a ServiceNow study of more than 34,000 people, half of customers named a lack of empathy as their top service frustration, while only 23% of executives identified it.

ServiceNow surveyed more than 34,000 customers, service reps and executives across eight industries, with banking and financial services among the largest groups of executives. On every customer frustration the study compared, executives came in lower than customers. The widest gap was unclear explanations of processes and policies, which in a bank or credit union means fee notices, disclosures, and letters that leadership teams write and approve. Meanwhile, reps spend less than half their time on customers and juggle three to five systems to solve one problem.

Jim Marous argues that distance keeps this gap open. He shares what happened when he asked a large credit union's board and senior leaders who had spent time on the front line in the past year why his own management trainee rotation taught procedures rather than customers, and how Delta resolved his complaint without a handoff. Marbue Brown, who led customer experience for Chase's consumer bank, adds the banking version: broad employee authority within compliance.

The episode closes with five practical steps for bank and credit union leaders: hear customers before approving a fee notice or letter, spend a day each quarter in a branch, the contact center or a back office area with a change to own, trace one recurring problem through every handoff with AI carrying the context, give employees the authority and training to resolve issues on first contact, and look for needs customers never bring to you.

Banking Transformed explores the changes reshaping banks and credit unions, with practical insight for the leaders responsible for what comes next. Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

Most banks and credit unions chase new deposits before growing the relationships they already have. Megan Pannier of Fiserv says onboarding has been an industry priority for 25 years, and a lot of institutions still aren't doing it well.

Megan talks with banks and credit unions every day, and the theme she hears most as they plan for 2027 is deposit growth. With everyone fighting for the same deposits, she argues that acquisition, retention and relationship deepening have to work as one strategy. Too many institutions still stop after the first few onboarding messages instead of using their data to decide what comes next. In her view, the work can't stop once the account is open, because relationship growth is a continuum.

Data is the biggest barrier Megan sees. Institutions sit on more customer data than they know how to use, even though a bank or credit union can see a customer's full financial picture while other providers see only a slice. Her standard is that data only has to be directional, and she shares how Fiserv itself relies on partners like Snowflake to connect its own data. She also explains why disciplined growth beats retreating, and where AI is actually working: fraud prevention and marketing personalization.

Megan's daughter turned 16 and opened her first account at a bank that doesn't allow Zelle under 18. Her babysitting money moved to Venmo, which had a debit card in her hands within 2 days, and she now treats it like a checking account. Megan's point is that the competitor to worry about is whoever owns the customer's daily financial activity. Her advice for every CEO finishing a 2027 plan is to start with the customer and answer one question first: why would someone bank with us?

About the guest: Megan Pannier is Head of Bank and Adoption Marketing at Fiserv, where she works with banks and credit unions on growth, onboarding and customer engagement. She and Jim Marous first worked together at Zions Bank.

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

Read the research: https://finhealthnetwork.org/programs/financial-health-pulse

Hear the podcast: https://youtu.be/VNylQkBCmBM?t=412

A customer of more than 20 years, rarely late on anything, took an unexpected medical hit, and his bank may never have noticed. He is one of an estimated 16.5 million American households that slid down a level of financial health in a single year, and banks and credit unions have their best chance to help before the first missed payment.

The Financial Health Network's 2026 Financial Health Pulse finds financially vulnerable households rose from 15% to 17%, matching the highest share on record, while nearly 1 in 4 households moved up or down a level of financial health in one year. The pressure reached homeowners, business owners and auto loan borrowers, 40% of whom now say their overall debt is more than they can manage. Many of these households are customers most banks and credit unions would call safe, and most still look fine on paper.

Jim Marous tells the story of a friend who has banked with the same institution for decades and was rarely late on anything, until an unexpected medical bill changed several things in his account at once. Each change on its own meant little. Together, they told a story. Jim explains why portfolio averages hide customers like this, why financial wellness programs often sit apart from the account where the slide shows up, and why the stress of that moment decides whether customers see their institution as being on their side.

The episode closes with four specific moves: watch for combinations of change against each customer's own history, prepare help that fits a timing problem or an ongoing shortfall with costs explained upfront, reach out through a named person the customer can call, and measure whether customers were still doing better six months later and felt supported. For more on putting the data you already have to work, listen to Jim's Banking Transformed conversation with Rachel O'Neil of Alkami, "Turning Insights into a Competitive Advantage."

About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at thedigitalbankingreport.com.