Financial Plus Credit Union’s partnership with MANTL reflects a cultural shift at the $1.4B credit union to embrace innovative technology that transforms the digital experience, automates manual tasks, and improves back-office efficiencies.
In less than a year after partnering with MANTL, Financial Plus Credit Union overhauled a legacy online account opening process that required every new account to be reviewed manually and digitized a lengthy in-branch account opening process, which infamously had 100 steps to open a new account. The result: new members can now open a share account on any banking channel in an average of four minutes.
Today, more than 60 employees at Financial Plus Credit Union are using MANTL to open accounts in-branch daily. Jessica McNier, Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Financial Plus Credit Union, acknowledges that “change can be difficult” and shares some of her best practices for encouraging employee adoption and overcoming common challenges associated with rolling out new technologies institution-wide.
When you introduce a new technology to the company, how do you get top-down buy-in to get the ball rolling?
Jessica McNier: Creating company-wide alignment when introducing a new technology is critical. When we first discussed overhauling our deposit account opening process across every channel, we strategically looked at access and asked the most basic questions:
- Why would we not make it easier to get members in?
- Are you going to do business with someone who makes it easier or harder?
The conversation with leadership and different internal departments then evolved into concepts. What apps do you use in your personal life on a daily basis? What kind of experiences do you value? Discussing the account opening journey at every level and unpacking pain points allowed us to create change champions at every level. Thinking about the journey differently is part of the checklist that led us to MANTL.
Is there anything you can do before you implement a new technology to get the front-end users on board?
Jessica McNier: You can—and should—create excitement for a new technology pre-launch. Drop the name, hype up the rollout, and keep employees updated on what is to come. Change is difficult at every level. There is not one of us who wants to go into the office today and change our password. However, sharing the context behind the change will make everyone feel included in the process and new direction. We included our Compliance team in early MANTL discussions, and they continue to be champions of MANTL to this day.
You are now live with MANTL in 12 branches. How did you approach the rollout and implementation?
Jessica McNier: We launched our online account opening with MANTL first, and it was very valuable for our team to understand the product, see the immediate results and iron out compliance. Our branch teams saw the success our digital team was having with MANTL – reducing the time it takes to open an account online from 10-15 minutes to four minutes while significantly increasing the approval rate – which created even more excitement for the rollout. The transition from implementing it online to in-branch was quick, and we worked with our learning development and branch leaders to figure out how to best approach the rollout.
It was critical to us that the transition did not feel forced. Right away, team members observed the efficiency and enhanced experience in using MANTL versus our legacy process. It was eye-opening for them to see the process go from 100 steps to open an account with our legacy system to 15 with MANTL. When you have a team member who is opening an account in just five minutes, and it takes the other member up to 30 minutes to do the same thing, that is pretty powerful.
Once we implemented MANTL, we let it trail and followed the data. We could tell who wasn’t as comfortable with the change by who wasn’t using the platform as much. We were able to approach them in a way that felt natural to better understand how we could support them, which helped get any late adopters on board.
What was the biggest outcome of the new in-branch account opening process and how did it encourage adoption?
Jessica McNier: The back-office efficiencies created are significant: Financial Plus Credit Union is saving almost 100 hours a month on in-branch account opening. By far, the biggest impact has been on our member experience and our employees’ ability to better serve our members.
At the heart of it, our frontline team members have an extreme passion for helping our members. Their adoption really clicked once they saw how the new process removed the tactical elements of opening an account—like collecting a driver’s license—and allowed them to take a consultative approach to serving the members. The conversation has shifted to how we can best help our members, and it makes our employees’ jobs more fulfilling.
Learn how Financial Plus Credit Union leveraged omnichannel deposit origination technology to transform the account opening experience across its 12-branch network, grow member relationships, improve operational efficiency, and provide the state of Michigan with a superior banking experience here.
