CU NextGen Engage 2025 Showcases Credit Union Experts

[read more Engage 2025 coverage here]

By John San Filippo

CU NextGen’s Engage 2025 conference was held in Cincinnati August 25-27. Finopotamus, an official media sponsor, was onsite to cover the event.

Unlike most other conferences that draw primarily on vendor experts, all sessions at Engage 2025 were led by active credit union technologists. Below is a summary of the three sessions Finopotamus attended August 26, the only full day of sessions.

Navigating the Shift: How Credit Unions and Fintechs Can Work Together to Power the Open-Banking Transition

Clark Duncan

In a session moderated by Clark Duncan, director of product growth at CU NextGen, credit union CIOs Ben Maxim of East Lansing, Mich.-based MSU Federal Credit Union ($8.2 billion; 380,000 members), and Sean Van Handel of Antigo, Wis.-based Covantage Credit Union ($3.8 billion; 177,000 members), tackled the complex topic of open banking. Maxim offered a straightforward definition: “This may not be the ChatGPT answer, but it’s simply the best way that financial institutions and fintech or other companies can share data between each other.”

Ben Maxim

Both panelists agreed that the conversation is urgent due to regulatory pressure, specifically surrounding recently resurrected rules that relate to Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as evolving member expectations. While Section 1033 creates compliance obligations, it also unlocks significant opportunities. Van Handel noted that while open banking makes it easier for members to leave, the reverse is also true. He added, “Not only will they be able to move their account from us very quickly; they’ll be able to move their account from Chase to us very quickly.”

Sean Van Handel

Maxim added that open banking is essential for engaging younger members who approach finances differently. “I think it’s very relevant to what we’re trying to accomplish, which is to start to engage with a generation that has little loyalty to one institution,” he stated. For credit unions, especially smaller ones feeling overwhelmed by the shift, the advice is to lean into collaboration.

Van Handel urged attendees to see the noted change as an opportunity. “Don’t see it just as a threat. I think it’s going to be the world we live in,” he said. Maxim advised leveraging existing relationships with core providers and other vendors who are also navigating this transition. “You have partners in your ecosystem that want to innovate with you,” he concluded.

Measure, Compare, Innovate: Taking Charge of Your Digital Presence Across Your Credit Union

Chad Jaenke, SVP/CIO of Melbourne, Fla.-based Space Coast Credit Union ($9.2 billion; 684,000 members), along with Nickolas Belesis, VP of Growth & Partnerships at FinTech Insights, detailed the credit union’s journey in replacing its legacy digital banking platform, Fiserv Architect, with CU NextGen’s Nextly platform. Jaenke described the previous environment as slow and restrictive, where simple changes required a long and expensive process involving statements of work that could take months to implement. “That’s what we were dealing with in a lot of our cases,” he said.

Chad Jaenke

Faced with this inflexibility, Space Coast partnered with CU NextGen to build a new platform based on Nextly, branded SCCU+. A key objective was to make the new platform immediately attractive to members, Jaenke said. “We couldn’t just make it like for like,” he explained, “so we said, okay, we will add 10% new features to the product at go-live.” To determine which features to add, the credit union used FinTech Insights’ platform to analyze the capabilities of competitors like Chase and Chime, as well as local institutions.

Nickolas Belesis

Perhaps the most unique aspect of the project was the implementation strategy. Instead of a hard cutover, Space Coast ran both the old and new platforms, allowing members to opt-in over several months. “It wasn’t a hot cut where we just dumped everybody over on a Saturday,” Jaenke said. “We ran them in parallel.”

This approach allowed for gradual load testing and refinement based on user feedback, he noted. Since the official launch, the credit union has adopted an agile development model, working in two-week sprints to deliver constant improvements. “We have made over 400 changes in the product since the go-live,” Jaenke shared. “As fast as we want to move, we can move.”

Driving True Growth and Profitability: A C-Suite Perspective

Jamie Harrison, Chief Growth Officer, and Jess Howard, CFO, both of Wichita, Kan.-based Meritrust Credit Union ($4 billion, 119,000 members), presented a case study on aligning growth and finance to create sustainable, long-term success. The duo, who joked about their initially opposing viewpoints, emphasized the importance of their partnership and mutual respect.

Jamie Harrison

“The reason why we were able to go through that conflict process is respect for each other,” Howard stated. Their entire strategy is built on a simple but powerful concept: “We follow this equation that states engagement plus loyalty equals profitability,” Harrison said.

A core component of the credit union’s success is CU NextGen’s Member Relationship Management (MRM) platform. Harrison described it as the critical link between high-level strategy and frontline execution. She said, “It’s the bridge that connects the strategy side of things to the actual conversion side of things, which at the end of the day is ultimately [what leads to] profitability.”

Jess Howard

A key lesson was redefining member engagement, she noted. The team learned that profitability isn’t tied to the sheer number of accounts a member holds, but to their actions within those accounts. “It’s not products per household either. It truly goes back to the behavior,” Harrison explained.

The MRM platform provides staff with a simple, color-coded view of a member’s engagement across five pillars – save, spend, borrow, plan and manage – which are defined by specific, profitable behaviors. This allows staff to instantly see opportunities to deepen relationships in ways that directly support the credit union’s financial goals. This strategic alignment is further supported by a cross-departmental Asset Liability Management (ALM) team. “Instead of that just being the finance team, it’s actually a collaboration of every element, every business unit within the organization,” Howard said.