Lessons in Digital Dexterity from Travis Credit Union

Jim Marous (00:00):

Hello and welcome to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report and co-publisher of the Financial Brand. I'm excited to have Grant Karsas, VP of Digital Experience at Travis Credit Union on the Banking Transformed Podcast today.

Jim Marous (00:28):

Grant oversees the member facing digital channels at Travis Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in California, with nearly $5 billion in assets and more than 245,000 members.

Jim Marous (00:41):

Grant shares insights into how Travis Credit Union leverages modern technologies to deepen member relations, through personalized experiences earning the credit union industry awards for excellence.

Jim Marous (00:53):

We also discuss how community-based credit union can compete successfully in a crowded market filled with major banks and new fintech entrants. It's clear that financial institutions of all sizes must become truly customer-centric to compete in a very crowded marketplace.

Jim Marous (01:10):

Travis Credit Union provides a model case study for using data-driven personalization, fintech integrations, and member journey enhancements to stand out.

Jim Marous (01:21):

So, Grant, you have a pretty impressive resume, working at some of the largest banks, some very successful credit unions, and even a fintech firm. Can you share the key aspects of your personal journey and what led you to Travis Credit Union? Why are you there?

Grant Karsas (01:36):

Absolutely, Jim, thanks so much. I'm thrilled to be here and chatting with you today. Really looking forward to the conversation. And first, with my background, as you mentioned, I really started out with Wells Fargo and learning the ins and outs of how the banking atmosphere works at their retail locations in the branches.

Grant Karsas (01:56):

And back in the early 2000s, it was a challenging environment and they kind of put you through the ringer to really learn how to manage teams and how to understand what lending means. And at that time, I learned also a lot about the challenges consumers were having with their own personal finances and how credit was just unknown and financial literacy was not a big topic and needed to be for many people.

Grant Karsas (02:22):

And when I left Wells right before the big time of 2008 in the market change, I had met someone who was starting to found a company. This was a fintech based on helping the average American get personal and financial guidance that they didn't think they could afford access to.

Grant Karsas (02:43):

And to me, that really resonated with how I had a passion for technology and what I had saw at Wells in those days. And so, we grew this company called HelloWallet over the years and really helped a whole lot of people manage their money and get unbiased insights and guidance to that.

Grant Karsas (03:01):

And then that kind of propelled me through the rest of my career of financial technology with Morningstar and seeing how they worked with many of the plan providers and deployed their technology and wanted us to come on board as an innovative fintech when they acquired us.

Grant Karsas (03:18):

And then going to KeyBank and how KeyBank wanted to solidify financial wellness in their branch locations and make it their differentiator, not just, "Hey, we've got a whole lot of products for you."

Grant Karsas (03:30):

And then finally coming to the credit union space and seeing, okay, this is the one area I really hadn't had experience in with technology. And I feel like I've really found a great home in the credit union industry here, especially now with Travis, with all the energy that's surrounding the team and what we've already been able to do here in just the two short years that I've been here.

Jim Marous (03:54):

So, it's interesting. Travis Credit Union has quite a history. Could you share a little bit about Travis credit union's history and also, and you kind of touched upon it, how it's changed over the last few years with management changes and things like that and how it informs the mission you're going on today.

Grant Karsas (04:10):

Absolutely. So, Travis Credit Union was founded in 1951 here locally in Vacaville, California, with the goal of really supporting military personnel at the Travis Air Force Base. Our headquarters now is still only just about 10-minute drive from that Air Force Base, but we've obviously expanded in that time to 22 branches and nearly a quarter of a million members and really have driven our commitment to the community continuously over the years and deep.

Grant Karsas (04:39):

And it's those relationships that have really grown the credit union for a long time now over the decades. But two years ago, the leadership team took the recognition on that they really needed to evolve the digital experiences and practice here at Travis. That's where they connected with me, and I came on board to start helping that.

Grant Karsas (05:01):

And we've had quite a few challenges along the way. Obviously, you touched on that we've had changes in our leadership where our former CEO who was great, just retired, and we have a whole new mindset here now. So, from when I first started to when I am here now. But it's really, really been an amazing change. And we have a tremendous leadership team that is super energized by what we're on the path to do, especially with our side of technology.

Jim Marous (05:29):

So, as I mentioned in some of our pre-call, I spent three years in California out from Ohio, where my home base is pretty much, and before and after that. But it's interesting because the financial landscape in California is extraordinarily competitive.

Jim Marous (05:45):

You not only have the huge banks that all have a presence out there, but you also have a number of smaller community-based credit unions and community banks that really are always fighting each other. And in many cases depends on where you are in the California marketplace, a very digitally astute customer base. So, how does Travis Credit Union differentiated services from all the competition around you?

Grant Karsas (06:11):

Great question. Actually, I was going to ask you about that from the Midwest. I'm originally from Indiana, Jim, so it's great to always have that connection chatting with good folks from the Midwest. So, I think it's a great question for credit unions across the board.

Grant Karsas (06:26):

Obviously, California, as you mentioned, being center of innovation and some folks will say where technology and fintech technology really got its start 30 plus years ago. So, you have all of this talent here in competitive side. You've got the big banks like the Wells that was founded here and B of A and Chase that have major size.

Grant Karsas (06:49):

But what I found with credit unions in this space is that the question even in the other banks that are not in the top 10, how do we compete with those top five banks that spend billions in technology, not to mention the fintechs that are pushing the envelope on innovation themselves and taking our customers away.

Grant Karsas (07:11):

Now this is even more worrisome for the credit union space because our margins are much smaller, and our budgets are much smaller than those banks too.

Grant Karsas (07:20):

But I'm from the side of we don't need to have billions of dollars in budget to be able to give just as good of digital experiences to our members. We just have to go about it in a different way.

Grant Karsas (07:35):

The build versus buy decision is a huge question for us in the credit union space, but it's more so on how are we partnering with the right vendors to bring in the right technology and experiences that we can provide to our members because their expectations are through the roof now with what they interact with on a daily basis in those. So, there's a variety of ways that we're trying to do that.

Jim Marous (08:01):

So, you talked about the third-party collaborations, and it's so important because we talk about it quite a bit on this show is that smaller finance institutions more than ever have the ability to punch way above their weight with the collaborations they can have because it can work fast. They can in many cases build a composable solution that really is for a specific purpose.

Jim Marous (08:24):

How do you select a collaboration with either a fintech or a third-party solution provider? What is important for you to look for in those collaborations?

Grant Karsas (08:34):

To me, that's part of the secret sauce of what we started to put together here at Travis. I think that selection process can make you very successful with the partnership or it can be very troublesome for you for a number of years of selecting the wrong one.

Grant Karsas (08:48):

So, what we've done is we've put together a very thoughtful process of steps for how we evaluate technology partners upfront. So, I think of it in two different halves. The first half of how are we evaluating end-to-end with the providers that are out there in the industry and taking that list down to our top two to three. And then really going through the main steps with them and the evaluation to know we're getting the right provider.

Grant Karsas (09:19):

To me, the difference in questions that we ask when you get down to it and you have identified your top providers, maybe a lot of their technology might be similar.

Grant Karsas (09:28):

But to me, what I found the differentiators are is how well do they know what good design practice is to be able to fit in our environment? Because that then influenced the user experience for our members because we are relying on them to control that.

Grant Karsas (09:42):

And then the second is how well are they practiced with what they want to do with account management to help us as their partner ongoing? There are many providers out there that say, we'll give you a call every month and see how things are going, but there are only certain ones that actually know how to provide that kind of help to you in an ongoing fashion so that you will continue to see the value in their product as you go.

Grant Karsas (10:07):

So, those things really separate out some of these firms when we're doing the evaluation step and then implementation. Do we have a strong team of all the steps and the rally cry internally to have everybody on board with our top priority of we are implementing this, here's our focus. We all have our strategic stakeholders in line for that. We've already evaluated the firm and know what their practice is for that implementation. Are we all walking down the same path for this?

Grant Karsas (10:40):

So, this big half of evaluation and the second of implementation is a huge focus for us. We did this when we recently, over the last year, selected and implemented a new digital banking platform. We're going through it right now, the same practice with another area that we're looking at as well for changing on the digital side.

Jim Marous (11:01):

It's interesting, I bring a lot of analogies into the sports world, but it's very much like a U.S. football team where you have to find the plug and play solutions that give you the talent you need to run with you to play in the same mindset you have that can rally as a team and can make a better impact than if you just added these components separately.

Jim Marous (11:21):

And you need, I talk about fintech and third-party providers. You need somebody who's going to be able to run down the field without you having to be there. Because there's only so much you can do.

Jim Marous (11:30):

In all your locations, you've been in charge of digital experiences and that that really is a very important role today where we have to go even beyond experiences to actually make it so that there's greater levels of engagement, where actually there's interactions going back and forth because everybody expects the experience to be good. It's the engagement, it's the ongoing growth of the relationship that becomes so important.

Jim Marous (11:55):

So, how do you determine what technologies will have the most impact on your member experience and engagement? And what factors and metrics do you use to measure success?

Grant Karsas (12:07):

Absolutely. We look at these from the experience. Actually, this is something that was kind of — it's ingrained in me from my experience of what I've had in my previous positions because when you're building technology from scratch, the design and UX component along with UI are so integral into making a successful product.

Grant Karsas (12:27):

You can build a technology, but it doesn't mean people are going to adopt it and engage with it. So, how are you ensuring those is the question that we're always asking our vendors. And that's why I really harp on the design component with them to know how are you iterating over time?

Grant Karsas (12:45):

Because we want that impact with our members, we're really looking at how can the high level of customer service and relationships we have in the branch network be extended into the digital channel. And it can only be done with those great experiences.

Grant Karsas (13:01):

So, we really look at adoption, engagement, and operations. Those are the three main categories of metrics we try to go through for those platforms to see how well they're operating and being engaged with our client base.

Grant Karsas (13:17):

A great one for instance that we've seen lately is a credit score was a feature that our members hadn't had before, along with some other financial wellness features. They had it in a certain state with our last platform, but not to the extent that we have now.

Grant Karsas (13:31):

And we've already seen in two months, five x the number of adopted, our new platform of credit score and financial wellness than had in many years of our previous one. And so, to us that's a huge win. We are doing what our members told us in our research that we were missing and that they had needs for, and they're adopting the product first, but then the second is going to be how's the impact coming along with the engagement over time?

Jim Marous (13:59):

So, given that, I've met with credit unions and community banks and big financial institutions over the last few years, and there's not always a situation where they bring on technology, bring on solutions, and then they actually market it or deploy it. They assume if you build it, they will come. And that's not always the case. How does Travis put the solutions you have into the marketplace so that your members actually know you have something new.

Grant Karsas (14:28):

So, with this, what I've tried to do over the number of years, I found the absolute importance and value in having digital and your marketing team so aligned. From a digital aspect and technology, we have our roadmaps. We live and die by those. That's what we show and go with our leadership, and we evaluate together and say, how are these priorities? And what's our anticipated launch dates for everything?

Grant Karsas (14:56):

But to your point, Jim, if our members don't know that we're rolling those out, we can't expect them just to hopefully stumble over them one day when they log in. So, we align those roadmaps and timelines with our marketing team for the engagement campaigns that they want to do with our member base.

Grant Karsas (15:13):

So, there should be a nice transition of, okay, we've launched, we've seen a number of people this impact or feedback from and response from people that have just found it so far. That gives us time to tweak our marketing message as well. So, then once we put that out to the greater masses, we hope and know that it's actually going to ring true with them to engage with it.

Grant Karsas (15:38):

And so, I think one more thing with that, that can be missed is continuous engagement campaigns about your digital products from your marketing team is essential. They can't just continue to pump out product, this is what our new product is, you want to acquire or something. This is something that services you and will help you as an additional engagement method for our members.

Jim Marous (16:03):

It's interesting because we forget about that and as a result, I'm finding that more and more financial institutions are not really doing a good job of measuring attrition. Many are using the legacy way of saying, how many accounts do I have? How many accounts have I lost? And against the entire portfolio.

Jim Marous (16:19):

Well, the reality is we have a lot of silent attrition going on where a customer or a member doesn't actually leave, they simply distribute their relationship across a number of financial institutions. And to your point, which you just brought up, that's where engagement becomes so important.

Jim Marous (16:34):

And if you don't continually offer something that's as good or better than what the marketplace offers around them, you'll lose that member in bits and pieces. The death by thousand bites without even knowing it because they aren't going to close a relationship.

Jim Marous (16:50):

I mean, I do research with my groups that I speak to quite a bit. I say, how many of you have closed a major financial relationship in the last five years? Nobody raised their hand. And then they ask, how many of you have opened a brand-new financial relationship in the last two years? And everybody raise their hand.

Jim Marous (17:06):

I tell people, now, look around the room. This is what's happening with your customers. Because these are bankers. These are people that actually work at financial institutions that there's even more of a reason not to use other financial services, but everybody's the same. Everybody's looking for this.

Jim Marous (17:22):

One of the things that serves your purpose that you've been bringing up is your use of the Salesforce Financial Services cloud. How do you use that technology, that capability to support your strategy, to personalize experiences and to help a person, help a member across the entire journey?

Grant Karsas (17:40):

Salesforce is a tremendous product. You can get so much value out of Salesforce and it's a tremendous company. But to your point, it can be a difficult one to chip away at for many organizations. Because not everyone has a Salesforce certified developer on their team to help build out all the intricacies for it.

Grant Karsas (18:02):

But I think from the beginning, two real big things that have happened here at Travis to really set us on the right path with this is one, everyone across the board, regardless of changes that we've had, is in agreement that Salesforce and the cloud services that we have with it are going to be our way forward in certain aspects. And we're invested in Salesforce as a product, so making sure there's no question there of switching or anything like that.

Grant Karsas (18:29):

And then the second is around what is our strategy going to be with this so that we can build to that with the levels of personalization that you're talking about.

Grant Karsas (18:38):

So, this year, coming year, actually, we are going to be diving deep into this. We're already this month rolling out our first steps in personalization. We're looking at this in two different areas. Personalization for non-members or just folks that come to our website and personalization for our members that are interacting with us in our spaces like our digital banking.

Grant Karsas (19:01):

And so, what our members are going to start seeing in the coming year plus with this are more of these from anything from, hey, you are looking at more content in a certain aspect from our website.

Grant Karsas (19:16):

We want to make sure that's presented upfront to you when you're coming back, to insights around how their trends are with their spending and helping them guide what their financial wellness and personal financial goals can be, rather than just giving them generic messaging of just setting their own goals.

Grant Karsas (19:37):

Sure, everyone wants to do that, but we actually need to make it a little more personalized than that with the insights we provide them to help direct them in that way. So, it's a big step for us in the coming year plus, that we're dipping our toe into right now. And Salesforce and the financial cloud is a huge part of building onto that.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (20:02):

We talked about it a little before we got on the phone. Because I want to make sure ... by the way, I had seen that you had signed up for or part of the Salesforce financial cloud, but I hear that from a lot of institutions and the big difference between some and others is almost every institution of 5 billion or above has Salesforce that they've purchased.

Jim Marous (20:23):

Very few from a percentage basis actually have done much with it. I mean, it's scary because it sits on the shelf in an old school kind of way. But it's interesting because as you said, it's not easy to maneuver. It's not simple by intuitive design. And Salesforce has created great services, but a lot of times they are challenged to help an organization your size with that final mile, the actual implementation and deployment for the benefit of the members.

Jim Marous (20:52):

And it's interesting that you do this. When you look at technology and when you look at advancements that you just discussed, how do you keep an eye on the speed of transformation? Because you come from a legacy banking environment as I do where planning used to be an annual process.

Jim Marous (21:11):

Well, the reality is deployment now almost has to be a quarterly engagement or faster. How do you keep that moving and how do you take care of being able to implement things quickly?

Grant Karsas (21:23):

I think the challenge of pace with technology is a huge question for anyone in my role. You feel it from the aspect of all of the outside factors that come in. Everyone talks about ChatGPT and how one day it didn't exist and then the next day it's everywhere and people are using it in all types of instances and still exploring that.

Grant Karsas (21:47):

But when you're in this role, it's how do I keep up with that pace and ensure my — I always ask myself, ensure that the partners that we bring on for our technology and having these experience deployed, how can we keep up with that pace?

Grant Karsas (22:02):

But in addition to that, how do I make sure that our leadership across the board also has that understanding that we're going with these technologies to be able to keep up with this pace and that, like folks say, digital transformation isn't just you start this day and end this day, there's no end point.

Grant Karsas (22:22):

So, it's always an evolution of things. And so, for us, we started this in a big way with looking at our digital banking and how are the modern architectures look? How can you plug and play, and a lot of folks talk about the open banking concept and everything that's coming up there. And people are starting to do that more.

Grant Karsas (22:44):

How do you have the right partner as a base and foundation where you can look at these other beneficial connections such as, like I said, the credit score that we provide to our members that you can plug into that doesn't take iterations of a whole year to roll out with.

Grant Karsas (23:05):

We've started where with our partner now on that platform, we do weekly releases, and we have the ability to implement new feature sets so much more because of the microservice architecture that they're built on.

Jim Marous (23:19):

That's actually a mindset. As you said, it's a cultural thing that you go, none of us can move that fast. And you brought up that finding the right partners is the only way to keep pace with what's happening because it used to be that we had to wait for our core providers to do that and core providers provide a great array of services.

Jim Marous (23:37):

However, when you're looking at specific needs, when you're looking at specific mission you have to achieve, maybe it's digital account opening or a faster loan process, something like that. They may not be the perfect partner for most smaller institutions.

Jim Marous (23:51):

And that's where these compostable solutions become so helpful in that, as I said, you worked at big bank, a lot of your management team has as well, that you can move so fast where at the old institutions you all worked for, you had layers upon layers of things you had to go through. This is kind of fun. It's a fun little sandbox.

Grant Karsas (24:11):

It truly is. I'm constantly energized in here and looking at our roadmap and being able to speak to that with our team and talk through, "Hey guys, look at all the different things that we can do." And coming in here, you talk about challenges and all of that.

Grant Karsas (24:28):

Well, it's truly, those are opportunities here of what we can build for our members in that experience that they have had expectations around for a long time and are now really seeing it. We saw in the research that we did, our members were telling us, "I really, really love Travis Credit Union and I'm devoted to it, but I would really love if you guys caught up a little bit more with technology." I'm sure because of the outside factors they see on a daily basis.

Grant Karsas (24:58):

So, how do we keep that trend going? To your point with when they see new things or new technology that's being developed come out, that allows us to service them continuously better and meet them where they are, whether they're in the branch or they're on their phone with things that we roll out.

Jim Marous (25:15):

So, can you discuss a specific challenge that TCU may have faced recently and how technology helps you actually overcome it?

Grant Karsas (25:24):

Sure. Wow, we have faced quite a bit of those since I've come on board. There's different aspects to the challenges. Kind of like what I said, it's some are challenges. A lot of them, we're trying to look at opportunities.

Grant Karsas (25:41):

And the technologies that we're implementing now, whether it's we're focused on digital banking or we're looking at our digital account opening experience and we want to ensure that it's easy for our members and seamless to acquire or onboard with any product that they're looking for that or our lending products and have those.

Grant Karsas (26:03):

So, we are really trying to phase those in the way that our members are going to find a more detailed experience and seamless for themselves with our partners that we’re choosing there.

Grant Karsas (26:14):

I think an interesting challenge that was coming to mind in discussion before the call today that it wasn't so much more of a technology one, but that really hit us hard early with some of this was the economic conditions over the last two years and how inflation has just been through the roof.

Grant Karsas (26:31):

You hear everywhere that it impacts that. Well, it's also impacting our changes as far as upgrading technology and bringing new partners on. There's a cost related to that.

Grant Karsas (26:41):

And then how is inflation also hitting that and making us look at new things or new ways of thinking about it with these partners before we implement it. Because I mean from their aspect, costs have gone up as well. So, it's a unique thing that I didn't anticipate from the technology side of a challenge, but we're seeing it.

Jim Marous (27:04):

It's interesting because a lot of financial institutions now are looking for those things that can have a great financial impact quickly because you want to be able to develop a very quick ROI against the investment.

Jim Marous (27:16):

So, you mentioned digital account opening, that's one where we see organizations, whether they know it or not, if you have a slow process, you may be losing as much as 60% of the customers that would like to work with you because the technology's slow.

Jim Marous (27:32):

And what happens is, as a human, if yours is slow, then I go onto the next financial institution and that may not be any faster. And you go, "Okay, now do I want to go to the next step and try to find one? Or is this just something that happens with banking?" Either way, they're not going to come back to you and say, "Okay, I'm going to try you back again."

Jim Marous (27:50):

So, it's one of those things that a lot of financial institutions are saying, "That's what I need because I can get a number of accounts based on that." Or as you mentioned, your Salesforce investment, geez, if I can build a broader array of relationships, I can have more organic growth that helps pay for the investment I'm making.

Jim Marous (28:09):

And thirdly, and it's so important, and it's a legacy leadership issue, is how do you make sure that what you buy and what you implement are close? So, in other words, a solution provider may come in and say, "We can move your digital account opening process to three minutes."

Jim Marous (28:28):

And they come in and you want to do it, they want to do it for you. But all of a sudden, you're saying, geez, I don't know if I'm really comfortable with, let's say the having to use the driver's license as a know your customer component. But that tremendously slows down the process.

Jim Marous (28:46):

How do you work with that internally to make it so that you don't get in the way of progress as an organization when you have a solution that you want to adopt?

Grant Karsas (28:56):

I think a key point to having ... when you — a product, if we even talk about something like a digital account opening where someone has to go through a number of steps and you mentioned how long it takes on these that as an organization, you can evaluate the main things such as how long and what are the steps of attribution or fall off throughout that experience.

Grant Karsas (29:19):

And if we can look at that, for instance, we looked at ours lately and saw a step in there that we had 10% drop off for some user experience that could easily be modified that we hadn't caught before. And 10% is a significant following, especially when you're far in the funnel. And so, making that tweak is exponentially impactful for us as an organization and an ROI for that product.

Grant Karsas (29:48):

So, really having the proper data points as we go in helps us get ourselves out of the way of opinions and emotions, if you will, that come into the conversation all too often when people are looking like you're saying at those trends of, well, that doesn't look right.

Grant Karsas (30:07):

Well, do the numbers say that it's effective though, and that people are actually using it, that a consumer of one or a consumer of many that we're looking for these numbers for in outputs and that really helps us with that.

Jim Marous (30:19):

Well, it's really focusing on the true member experience, it’s focusing on the ROI and metrics, looking at it around the way and then saying, okay, as an organization, we got to do more than just talk a good talk. We got to walk that walk.

Jim Marous (30:32):

And so, there's some people that's going to have to their pride maybe reevaluate what they do for Travis in the back office because if the back office is in some way in the legacy mode, it's real hard to make digital work. We may do it, but it's not going to be real smooth.

Jim Marous (30:49):

So, when you look at the credit union space and the way it differentiates itself, even the community banking space, one of the ways it does that is the human connection, the ability to really show a human emotion to every interaction.

Jim Marous (31:04):

Well, those interactions in the branches have obviously gone down and maybe the phone elements have gone up a little bit, but overall, how do you look at technology and balancing the adoption of new technology with the need for that human connection?

Grant Karsas (31:19):

I love this topic. I have something just ingrained in my mind from years ago when I was at KeyBank. I was sitting in a meeting with Beth Mooney at the time who was the former CEO there.

Jim Marous (31:30):

Know her well. Yes. Our whole team does, in fact. Yeah.

Grant Karsas (31:33):

I figured you do. I figured you do. And I'll never forget when she told me, she said, "Grant, one thing that we found with our technology and changes is that trust is very difficult to build with consumers on technology alone." And she couldn't be more right.

Grant Karsas (31:52):

And to me, that has always stuck with me with how I go about building or designing or implementing technology since, and in the credit union space, I feel that we have this very unique opportunity where credit unions so pride themselves on the relationship they have with their members and the local communities that they serve, and the members will speak it from the mountaintop.

Grant Karsas (32:18):

How do we take that into our digital space to extend and provide that kind of service to our members to just say, "Hey, this digital is just an extension of what you're getting in the branch. We want you still to interact with our team in the branch network because that's where you have a great relationship, but we also want to meet you where convenience can be done, whether it's at home or you're on the go with your phone to have that."

Grant Karsas (32:45):

And our branch network and our team there, they're all on board and understand that as well because they know that our members need that level of service and simplicity or ease, if you will, in their day-to-day in addition to those relationships. So, I think really continuing to focus on how we are bridging that gap of bringing that trust and level of service into the digital extension is great here.

Jim Marous (33:12):

You brought up a great point because what Beth said was true. I mean, we have this high level of trust, but it can be broken if you keep on under-delivering on that value transfer. So, in other words, as a consumer, we used to drive the customer expectations. So, whatever we did, they bought.

Jim Marous (33:29):

Well, that's changed quite a bit because of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Uber, all those experiences say, gosh, can you do better in that? And I know I go into my financial institution quite often and go, really? I go, really? Think about what you're saying here, about why you're doing what you're doing.

Jim Marous (33:47):

And TD bank up in the northeast, they took over a organization way back in the day that was known for their community involvement. They'd have pens, they'd have dog biscuits, all this. And it was all part of that overall experience.

Jim Marous (34:01):

But it was interesting because when TD Bank took over this financial institution, my question to them was, okay, so you're going to build a better digital banking experience. How do you replicate the dog biscuit? How do you make it so that you have that feeling, that emotion level, but also where you keep on building those experiences?

Jim Marous (34:19):

And you're right, we have more potential now than ever before with digital data and all these other things to build that better experience, to build engagement. We can't let that go because that trust then wanes. And I know in my own financial institution situation for my business bank, my trust is probably more with PayPal than it is with the financial institution I work with where my money lies. Because they're always looking out for my benefit. They have an empathy for me.

Jim Marous (34:47):

I know in my personal level, sometimes it's the same way where I go, "Why aren't you my partner here?" I mentioned before the call that I had a mortgage that they never moved the rate when the rates moved. They just didn't follow it down.

Jim Marous (35:01):

And when I finally decided I needed to refinance I did with another financial institution, all of a sudden, my old financial institution said, "Why didn't you come to us?" I said, "Because you had eight years for me to stay with you, but you never took that level of ... you said you loved me, but you didn't show me you loved me," which is a tough deal.

Jim Marous (35:20):

So, as we're looking at the future at Travis Credit Union, you guys are doing a lot of amazing things, and you certainly are punching above your weight. What are some opportunities you see in the near future that you're going to implement that are going to make Travis Credit Union even better?

Grant Karsas (35:35):

We're on this track right now where we have to always have the next thing ready up and lined up to go. We can't do this where we're looking and saying, "Okay, we, we did a successful implementation and rollout of this new digital platform for online banking. Let's talk about what's next." We need to have that lined up and ready to go months and months prior to that.

Grant Karsas (35:59):

Now things shift and we try to be agile with our movements of where things shift. But what we're really trying to do is put those pieces together ahead of time so that we already know where we're moving to make the biggest impact for our members.

Grant Karsas (36:15):

And as we go to improve our digital channels, whether it be the lending side here coming up in the digital account opening side, and have all these experiences improve, we need to be cognizant of the things that you just mentioned of we have this data. How can we build on that with more personalized experiences to bring in that trust?

Grant Karsas (36:37):

It's on us to go to our members and not for them to come to us. The bank that you were with and they said, why didn't you come to us? Well, it wasn't your responsibility, I think. That should be theirs to go to you for that.

Jim Marous (36:49):

Exactly. That's old school thinking that when I want to make a decision, I'll come to you and tell you what I want. Geez, you guys got a whole lot more competition than simply the doors of the banks on the street. There's a lot of digital options out there.

Grant Karsas (37:04):

It is. Don't make it hard for me. When I use technology just in my day-to-day, that's what I'm always looking for. How hard or difficult is it that these folks — I always say that seamless and intuitive design is invisible? You don't notice it because it flows through and you're able to accomplish that easily.

Grant Karsas (37:25):

But bad design jumps out at you so quickly. And that's what we need to make sure that with all these experiences that we're rolling out, we're having that for our members on the service side.

Jim Marous (37:40):

So, Grant final question. You've spent a few years now at Travis. You've done a lot of things. The organization has moved forward tremendously. If you're talking to a community bank or a financial institution of any size, and you give them one piece of advice from what you've learned, what is it?

Grant Karsas (37:58):

I think the biggest thing that I've found that's really helpful is really two things. Really build those relationships early and often with your leadership team and your peers so that they understand what the vision is that you're trying to put together on the digital front.

Grant Karsas (38:16):

I mean, if I did not have the tremendous support from Kevin, our executive team, our board and relationships with my peers, and team, we couldn't do what we've done and what we're continuing to do.

Grant Karsas (38:31):

So, I think building those relationships is that first thing and having that understanding. And part of that understanding for the second part comes from being able to communicate that, I call this my roadshow, where I have just my certain slides that are like, here's what digital does. If you're unfamiliar with this.

Grant Karsas (38:48):

Here's what we're trying to grow towards and what our vision is and our goals for our members that obviously align with our goals as an institution and also with what our members are looking for from technology and making sure that's understood across the board. So, having that buy-in, in those relationships has been tremendously impactful and helpful.

Jim Marous (39:08):

Boy, that's interesting. You've just said something in a better way than I've ever said it, which is great member experiences start with internal partnerships.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (39:16):

I mean, we talk about it often that it's leadership that's got to be in charge, but you said better than I've ever said, which is the partnership with your members to make that work, you have to have partnerships with your internal teams. Because if the back office is broken, you can't make this look any better. It gets broken one way or the other.

Grant Karsas (39:39):

Grant, thank you so much for being on the show. As always, I talk about these FIsionaries podcasts as being so enlightening and so much fun because it really does show that organizations of all sizes can do great things and they have some of the best ideas to implement no matter how big you are. So, Grant, thank you so much.

Grant Karsas (40:00):

Thank you so much, Jim, for allowing me the time to share what we're doing at Travis. Take care.

Jim Marous (40:05):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoy what we're doing, please take some time to show some love in the form of a review.

Jim Marous (40:14):

Finally, be sure to catch my recent articles on the Financial Brand and check out the research we're doing in the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (40:21):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer Leah Haslage, audio engineer Chris Fafalios and video producer Will Pritts.

Jim Marous (40:29):

I'm your host, Jim Marous. Until next time, remember, advanced technology is important, but it takes visionary leadership to deploy solutions that can really improve experiences.

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