Credit Union Spotlight Shines at FinovateFall
- Roy Urrico
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
By Roy Urrico
Few events highlight financial technology at the frenzied pace of a Finovate show. FinovateFall, held September 8-10, 2025 at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City, was no different.
The event was worthy of the nearby stage presentations in the middle of Broadway’s theater district—60-plus innovative live product demos from fintech startups as well as established players, and more than 2,000 senior business leaders including C-suite leaders, decision-makers, senior executives, and financial innovators attending.
Finding a need to continue to develop a niche section for credit unions, the fintech showcase brought back “Credit Union Spotlight,” a session that provides space to connect with companies demonstrating financial technology. According to event organizers, the goal of the session is to cultivate greater collaboration between credit unions and fintechs, while offering credit union technologists a chance to connect with peers about best practices when partnering with fintechs.
Finopotamus, a media partner at FinovateFall2025, was allowed to sit in on the invitation-only Credit Union Spotlight session.
The Credit Union Spotlight at FinovateFall
Last spring, Greg Palmer, vice president and director of fintech strategy at Finovate, told Finopotamus the evolution of the Credit Union Spotlight session—FinovateFall in 2023—and the plan for its inclusion at FinovateSpring and FinovateFall (2025). “This kind of grew organically last fall. We noticed that we had a lot of credit union representatives attending FinovateFall (2023),” said Palmer. “It was pretty successful giving credit unions space to connect with each other, and also pulling in some of our demoing companies who focus on the credit union ecosystem.”
For FinovateFall 2025, Credit Union Spotlight was sponsored by Des Moines, Iowa-based Curql (pronounced ‘circle’), a collective of close to 150 credit unions jointly investing in fintech, to bring timely solutions to the credit union industry. “We're proud to be the sponsor,” said Nick Evens, president and CEO of Curql. “We did this in San Diego at FinovateSpring, and it went so well we were invited back to help facilitate this. We say we need a credit union carve-out at these big events. Credit unions are not in the majority. There are a lot of bankers here, there are a lot of VCs (venture capitalists), a lot of PE (private equity) firms, a lot of investors at this type of event. We asked for a carve out for just credit unions to get up close and personal with someone.”
An Eight-Minute Rotation
For the Credit Union Spotlight session, nine rotating fintech teams were given eight minutes at tables filled with credit union representatives to make their pitch and field questions.
Evens introduced the head of each team who each explained what services their companies offer:
Craig McLaughlin, CEO at Finalytics.ai: “We are a personalization platform that brings together data from the three primary checkpoints that users engage with credit unions: the digital channel, the public based website, (and) the third is the online application process.”
André Jones, SVP at Bankjoy: “We are a digital banking provider. We have digital banking, online account opening statements and notices. It is an end-to-end solution.”
Danial Jameel, CEO at Saris AI: “We build AI (artificial intelligence) workflow agents for back office and operations.”
Kevin Sheetz, CEO and co-founder at Powerlytics: “We help credit union solve three key challenges: drive member growth, optimize lending lifecycle, and enhance member experience.”
Eric Stradley, president of Caribou: “We are an auto refinance platform and we help credit unions grow their members with high quality loans and high-quality members.”
Ian Lampl, co-founder/CEO LoanStreet: “We have four primary services. One, we help credit unions participate (in) loan buying and selling. We will facilitate the ongoing reporting. We also provide a lot of loan analytics to help credit unions. And finally, we also offer a commercial servicing platform for credit unions.
David Dayton, director, fraud and identity solution consultants, LexisNexis Risk Solutions: “We provide technology to help with fraud, (and) to help with compliance risk and with just managing general risk.”
Daniel Perret, director of product at Quavo Fraud and Disputes: “We try to restore financial trust, increase account-holder loyalty through offering the only full-service disputes management platform.”
Jonathan Arad, CEO at Takara. “We work with credit unions, particularly those with a large portfolio of low interest mortgage loans, enabling them to offer their members a way to buy a home without losing money on the higher interest.”
From Nov. 7-9 Curql Collective and CUNA Strategic Services (CSS) will host the fifth annual VentureTech conference in Frisco, Texas. Evens described the event as a “fintech showcase for credit unions,” adding that participating fintechs are not necessarily Curql or CSS backed at this time. Finoptamus is a media partner of VentureTech.
Finopotamus will feature additional company profiles gathered at FinovateFall in the upcoming weeks.