How $1.5 Billion Farmers Insurance Federal Credit Union Boosted Member Engagement By Modernizing Its Digital Banking Experience
Like many credit unions, Farmers Insurance Federal Credit Union (FIGFCU) has seen its 60,000 members – and the broader membership base it is targeting – increasingly leverage digital banking to manage their personal finances. In response to this shift and determining that its existing offering was lacking, the credit union committed itself to modernizing the digital banking experience for its members and in the process, gaining more control over its technology roadmap.
FIGFCU’s senior management recognized that the shortcomings of its existing digital banking platform were actually having a negative effect on the health of the business – assets were declining and member attrition was rising as some members were enticed by competitive financial institutions’ more modern banking services. A change was necessary and the FIGFCU’s team committed itself to a wholesale conversion of its digital banking experience, even going so far as to develop a new brand to mark the initiative.
The first step was to select the right technology partner for this new chapter. After a diligent evaluation of options in the market, Farmers turned to Constellation Digital Partners and its cloud-native Constellation’s Digital Banking platform. Farmers was already familiar with Constellation, having served as an initial investor in the company, and it now turned to Constellation’s open platform to enable a seamless, digital banking experience to its members -- regardless of device.
Of critical importance to the credit union was the ability to meet members’ digital banking needs today as well as their expanding set of needs and expectations in the future. Rather than being forced to commit to a certain set of features through a single platform provider, Constellation Digital Banking provides FIGFCU with the flexibility to choose from a range of integrated digital tools provided by a host of different fintechs. This means the credit union is free to change the mix of features it offers to its members over time as those member needs evolve.
Working together, FIGFCU and Constellation developed a novel approach to converting members to the new digital experience, branded as Tulee. FIGFCU wanted to incentivize members to remain engaged with the legacy platform while the full suite of new, improved services was being ported over to Tulee. To achieve this, FIGFCU initially launched Tulee as a companion app to the legacy platform and began to offer new, desirable tools that were only available on Tulee a full six months before the legacy platform was retired. This enabled members to continue using their familiar, existing set of services while encouraging them to activate the Tulee experience to gain access to the new tools.
Once the legacy system was retired, all of its traditional services were simply activated through the new platform, so for members who had signed up with Tulee, the conversion to the new digital experience was already complete. The net result was a much more well received conversion than one that forced members to go through a traditional enrollment process.
Following the conversion to Tulee, FIGFCU’s members gained the ability to choose specific services that they find most useful and relevant to them, such as remote deposit, check orders to money transfer and bill payment – something that the credit union says has been key to driving member enrollment and engagement within the new digital experience. In fact, the adoption rate ahead of the full conversion had been five times higher than initial projections with FIGFCU realizing over 55 percent enrollment at the end of day one.
“Constellation’s Digital Banking has allowed us to provide our members with a truly customizable, holistic digital banking experience – one we couldn't get with other solutions – and leverage the same powerful, adaptable technology used by much larger institutions,” said Beth Rodgers, CMO of FIGFCU.
By giving members early access to new features, FIGFCU had the ability to gather member feedback before the hard launch and make any necessary adjustments prior to the official conversion. This approach enabled the credit union to minimize the influx of inbound member help requests that typically accompany a platform conversion. In fact, FIGFCU created a new help line in anticipation of increased member support calls on day one, but due to the low number of inbound calls, decided to shut down the dedicated extra support call line after just six hours.
“We expected to get a fairly small percentage of members onto the app initially, and to achieve full adoption in a matter of weeks. We dramatically exceeded both of those targets and exceeded goals for getting new members who had not used the old app onto the new platform,” said Constellation CEO, Kris Kovacs.
In the months following the conversion, FIGFCU has continued to see increases in member enrollment and engagement, with a 10 percent increase in the first three months. Perhaps most notably, 9 percent of new members were not enrolled on the previous platform at all. Since going live, over 98 percent of FIGFCU’s online banking users are now active on Tulee.
“We are very pleased with the success we’ve seen with Tulee’s launch and our experience working with the Constellation team,” said Rodgers. “We look forward to Tulee’s continued momentum, and our continued work with Constellation to develop other tools that will be uniquely designed to serve our members.”
About Author:
Kris Kovacs is Founder and CEO of Constellation Digital Partners (Constellation), a leading provider of digital banking solutions that enable community-based financial institutions to deliver a unique and customized digital banking experience to their members. Constellation’s patented, open development platform allows credit unions to pursue innovative fintech services at the pace of their individual digital strategy.