From Evaluation to Deployment: MSU Federal Credit Union’s Fintech Partnership Process

By John San Filippo

At FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, Ami Iceman Haueter, CXO, and Ben Maxim, CTO, of $8.2 billion, 380,000-member MSU Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU) offered attendees an in-depth look at their organization’s deliberate and refined process for evaluating fintech partnerships and successfully deploying their solutions. Their co-presentation outlined a comprehensive framework designed to move beyond simple vendor relationships towards true collaborations that enhance the credit union’s offerings and benefit its members.

Picking the Right Partners: More Than Just a Vendor 

Ami Iceman Haueter and Ben Maxim take the state.

A central tenet of MSUFCU’s philosophy, as emphasized by Maxim, is the crucial distinction between a vendor and a true partner. While vendors supply software or services, partners are mutually invested in the success of the collaboration. Maxim underscored the importance of finding companies that not only offer a solution but also align with MSUFCU’s organizational culture and demonstrate a genuine willingness to work together closely. He cautioned against premature enthusiasm, advising a realistic perspective on implementation timelines to avoid overcommitting.

“You have to pick your partners,” stated Maxim, adding with emphasis, “find people that fit your aesthetic, your culture, that want to work with you, that are as invested in your success as you are in theirs.” He contrasted this statement with a typical vendor relationship, noting, “You pick them, they have this software, you buy from them and they’re not really going to partner with you unless you’re OpenAI or something like that.”

Creating Pilots and Setting Measurable Goals

The MSUFCU process moves from identification to practical testing through the creation of pilots with clearly defined goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), explained Maxim. He acknowledged that while intuition can play a role – what he referred to as “going with your gut” – setting measurable KPIs is paramount for objectively evaluating an innovation’s impact. Initial assumptions are made, such as the expectation that a specific fintech might lead to increased deposits, and these assumptions are then rigorously tested during the pilot phase.

Understanding the specific audience for a particular fintech solution is also vital. Maxim stated that not every innovation will be relevant or beneficial to all MSUFCU’s 370,000 members. Therefore, defining the relevant audience and tailoring KPIs to that group is an essential step. “Every fintech isn’t going to help every single one of those members,” he noted, adding they structure KPIs around serving the identified segment, for example, “serving 20,000 members.”

Proving Out Results and Establishing Standards

A critical stage involves proving out the results of the pilot and maintaining a critical perspective during the evaluation. MSUFCU’s process involves deploying the fintech solution to a subset of their members, allowing for the collection of authentic feedback from end users. Maxim highlighted the invaluable nature of this real-world testing, stating, “It doesn’t really matter what you think it should do. Once someone starts using it, that’s when you know how it’s really going to function.”

Setting clear standards for pilot success is also embedded in their process. Maxim shared a specific benchmark used: “We’re looking at all our pilots getting 5 to 10% engagement of the known audience. That’s a good result for fintech.”

Putting Partners into Practice and Measuring Regularly

Once a pilot demonstrates promising results, the focus shifts to operationalizing the partnership and integrating it into practice. This involves forming dedicated teams to manage the implementation and ongoing use. Crucially, measurement is not confined to the end of the pilot. Maxim stressed the importance of regular check-ins throughout the pilot duration to identify opportunities for iteration and improvement. He said you can’t “turn it on and disappear for that whole time and ask, well, how’d it go?” Instead, he advocated for frequent checks, even as often as “every couple of weeks,” to assess progress, and then pivot, if needed.

The Critical Handoff and Scaling for Sustainability

A distinctive and highly effective element of MSUFCU’s process is the deliberate handoff that occurs when a pilot is successful and receives approval through their internal “green light” process. Responsibility transitions from Maxim’s innovation team to Iceman Haueter’s experience team. This division of labor leverages the distinct strengths of each group: the innovation team excels at rapid testing, tweaking, and what Maxim humorously described as “bubble gum and paper clipping everything together,” while the experience team is geared towards the long-term placement, maintenance, and ongoing data collection for the product.

Iceman Haueter elaborated on the significance of this transition: “That is a really critical piece to this process – knowing the team strength and identifying the players in your organization that can both do the quick-turn stuff and then the team that’s going to maintain it for the next year, three years, five years, 10 years.” Scaling the solution for sustainability, determining its permanent ownership within the credit union, and establishing ongoing performance measurements are key activities during this phase.

Promoting the Tool and the Strategic Decision to Pass

Successfully deploying a fintech solution requires more than just technical integration; it demands active promotion. Iceman Haueter emphasized that it’s essential for the credit union to invest in supporting and communicating the value of these solutions to their members. This includes dedicated efforts like creating a “digital support team” within her department to train frontline employees on how to discuss and recommend the fintech products to members based on their specific needs. She stated, “Our fintech partners are only as good as the space that we give them to actually be utilized by our membership.”

Finally, their process incorporates the strategic decision of knowing when to “pass” on a partnership, even if it was initially successful. If, after a period, the partnership no longer provides value to members, the fintech is not innovating, or the collaboration isn’t progressing as expected, it’s a viable option to discontinue it. Iceman Haueter acknowledged that this can be a challenging decision for some organizations who view partnerships as perpetual commitments, but she stressed its necessity. “It’s okay to let it go. It’s okay to walk away and say this didn’t work,” she said. “Or it’s okay for us to say at one point in time this was valuable and now we’re going to sunset it for something that’s meeting the mark a little bit better.”

Top Five Takeaways for Successful Fintech Engagement

Iceman Haueter concluded the session by summarizing the MSUFCU’s’s top five suggestions for credit unions looking to successfully engage with fintechs:

• Find the people in your organization who want this. Cultivate a culture of innovation and identify internal champions.

• Look for partners, not just vendors. Seek true collaborators who are invested in mutual success.

• Create a process. A repeatable process brings clarity and scalability to innovation efforts. As Iceman Haueter noted, “If you cannot replicate it, it’s just going to get messy really fast.”

• Promote or pass. Be prepared to fully support successful initiatives or make the difficult but necessary decision to move on, always providing honest feedback to partners.

• Practice what you preach. Actively invest time and effort in elevating product offerings to members. “If you're not going to spend the time on trying to elevate your product offerings to your members, it's simply not going to stick long term,” she concluded.

By adhering to this structured yet adaptable framework, guided by a commitment to true partnership and member value, MSUFCU has built a robust process for evaluating, deploying, and managing fintech solutions effectively.