2025 Tekkie Award Winner for Member Growth: Credit Union 1

By Roy Urrico

Lombard, Ill.-based Credit Union 1 (CU1, $2 billion, 115,000 members) is the winner of the 2025 Tekkie Award in Member Growth category.

“CU1 is honored to be recognized for the ways we are innovating to best serve our members. We know that continually expanding technology and incorporating the latest advancements is the best way to both grow and to provide our members with convenience, personalized service, and 24/7 accessibility,” Todd Gunderson, CEO of CU1, told Finopotamus. Our partnership with Cotribute is a key part of our continually evolving approach to financial technology, and we look forward to continuing to innovate together.”

Philip Paul, CEO of Contribute, told Finopotamus, “We're just humbled and super grateful. Finopotamus is a great

industry recognized source. To be recognized by them is an honor. We appreciate that. It is really a privilege working with Todd and his (CU1) team. They are visionaries and I think a lot of other credit unions are looking up to them in terms of how to operate. We are excited about our platform, but at the end of the day, it is really up to our clients.”

CU1 Expanding its Reach

CU1 has expanded its reach serving members in Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and beyond while maintaining its community-oriented approach to servicing its members. Recognizing that credit unions in general are struggling with organic growth, CU1 wanted to increase its attraction to potential new members and favorability with current account holders by engaging with Anaheim, Calif.-based Cotribute (a 2024 Tekkie award-winner), which features an embeddable platform aimed at helping credit unions grow deposits, loans and memberships.

The credit union’s technology goal ultimately is to give members the option on how they connect with CU1, making its products intuitive and easy to use, Gunderson said. CU1 especially wanted to meet members’ needs without requiring a visit branch or call center interaction.

“One of our core values is trying to make things easy. We do not really consider ourselves as competing against financial institutions. The reality of it is we are competing against Amazon and Google and Facebook and TikTok and all of the other things that people have in life that are easy access. That is the expectation. The closer we can get to that, the more successful we can be,” said Gunderson.

“Cotribute helps us meet new members where they are with a frictionless, streamlined experience,” Gunderson said. “It is also not uncommon for consumers to start doing something online and finish checking out minutes, hours, or days later. We want to deliver an experience that makes it easy to pick back up and we can do that with Cotribute. In a highly competitive financial marketplace, where consumers have so many options, the technology and innovation we have found in our partnership with Cotribute helps us make it easier for consumers to choose CU1.”

“We focus on helping credit unions grow. That is new members, but also expanding the relationship with existing members,” Paul said.

Becoming Digitally Capable

Recognizing that most members have digital preferences to open accounts, CU1 needed to reimagine its account opening process to make it entirely digital. Plus, Gunderson said CU1 has a diverse membership base that requires an online and mobile presence at all times.

The credit union has partnerships with colleges and universities, as well as several college conferences, across the country. Gunderson noted, “College kids and young adults are digital natives. They do not want to visit a branch or pick up the phone to complete their financial transactions, they want to handle their finances online.”

CU1 and Cotribute officially partnered in 2023. CU1’s leadership team collaborated with Cotribute to launch a new digital opening platform in less than 90 days. Cotribute’s digital account opening solution enabled CU1 to manage the digital onboarding process for members, reducing friction in the digital account opening experience.

Gunderson explained, “The automation also benefits our internal team immensely, with decision intelligence enabling our team members to do their job more efficiently. When more is automated, our team members are able to dedicate more time to enhancing each member’s experience.”

A specific example: As the CU1 team was reviewing the onboarding process, they realized there was a high drop-off rate when visitors were prompted to enter identification information – a decrease from about 90% to about 64%. To ascertain the friction point, CU1 asked members for feedback and CU1 evaluated the platform’s information. It found that the identification section was difficult for members. Gunderson said, “Most people are doing digital banking when it’s convenient for them – they aren’t going to want to get up and find their government ID, they’re going to abandon the process.” CU1 worked with Cotribute to simplify the process for identity verification to eliminate drop-offs.

Cotribute's modular platform also allows CU1 to select the exact capabilities they currently need, giving the credit union the flexibility to add additional components in the future. The platform also enables CU1 to track performance via analytics and optimize processes on a regular basis, sending consistent reminders for abandoned applications

The Cotribute platform also features a "Lego block" style microservices architecture, providing agility and flexibility for creating tailored packages, products and offerings, Paul explained. Cotribute’s system includes:

• Embedded digital account opening,

• Loan origination,

• Member/customer onboarding,

• Smart cross-selling opportunities,

• Community engagement programs,

• Advanced fraud detection,

• Intelligent insights, and

• Advanced analytics.

The Results Keep Coming

Measurable results for CU1 using the Cotribute platform:

• In the first six months of 2024, CU1 saw a 4.6% organic membership growth rate. Using a 121,000-membership baseline this translated to 5,664 new members annually.

• As a result of the optimizations to the digital account opening experience and new campaigns run by CU1, the average monthly number of new members increased by 527%.

• The average membership growth per month from the last six months of 2023 to the first six months of 2024 saw an increase of 1,952%.

Today, CU1 members can open accounts 24/7/365 with complete self-service options, enabling the credit union to grow efficiently. Cotribute’s advanced fraud prevention and automated decision intelligence frees back-office staff to spend their time serving members to deepen relationships and operate more efficiently, versus completing manual application reviews.

“The idea that increased digital tools means less personal touch is completely bogus. Having a robust mobile platform enables staff to offer more time to the needs of their members and improve their financial lives,” Gunderson said, “If you can offer more self-service options, your staff can meet more members in the branches to address their more complex needs.”

“Credit Union 1 has had record-setting months since our partnership with all of our consumer deposit products now in the system, for both new and existing members. And the depth of the analytics provided by Cotribute have allowed us to be increasingly intentional with our approach, like customizing our marketing automation for each product based on what we are learning,” Gunderson added.

According to Paul, there are three specific areas where Cotribute helped CU1:

• Frictionless account opening for consumers or for businesses. “It is a very easy experience for members. And CU1 has done a tremendous job of optimizing it.”

• The ability to co-brand or private label these financial products. “CU1, as you have heard, they have a lot of partnerships with universities. It is the way to get CU1’s products distributed across a large ecosystem.”

• Decision intelligence. “When you have a lot of membership growth, you also want to make sure that the whole process is optimized for operational efficiency. (CU1) has done a tremendous job to make sure that as applications come in (they are) automatically checked for fraud and put into the right queues. If it is not done right or optimized correctly, it can also be a big drop off point when prospective members come in if that is not frictionless or done at the right time.”

Gunderson also praised Contribute’s responsiveness. “Once we get feedback regarding the process, whether it is negative or positive, they have done extraordinarily well in making it a priority. We value them a lot for that reason, and that is led to some tremendous results.”