How CUs Can Digitally Modernize While Maintaining Community Roots

By Roy Urrico

With the rise of digital expectations, credit unions are incorporating technological modernization into their community-first roots to enhance both back-end infrastructure and member-facing services. They are doing this while preserving their characteristic personalized service through fintech partnerships and strategic planning and execution.

Jim Ryan, vice president of strategic partnerships at Curql, a collective of credit unions jointly investing in fintech; and Adam Hughes, CEO at Amount, a digital origination and decisioning software as a service (SaaS) platform, spoke with Finopotamus about credit unions’ digital approaches.

Jim Ryan, vice president of strategic partnerships at Curql.

“Credit unions have always offered an exceptional member experience in their branches,” said Ryan. “That's really the difference maker that credit unions have offered – that members feel at home at their credit union. One of our biggest challenges in the credit union industry is to align that exceptional member experience from the branch, and what makes them special, in their digital channels.”

Forming the Curql Collective

Des Moines, Iowa-based Curql (pronounced “circle’) is a collective of close to 150 credit unions jointly investing in fintech, to bring “timely solutions to the credit union industry.” With over 40 fintech partners in the collective portfolio, Curql’s goal is to ensure that technology is designed specifically for credit unions, allowing them to better serve their members and remain competitive in an evolving financial landscape.

On Oct. 31, 2021, Curql officially closed out its venture capital fund, Curql Fund I, to investors at just over $250 million. In May 2025, Curql announced that Fund II raised over $309 million in capital from 83 credit unions across the nation.

In March 2025 Curql, announced that the Navy Federal Credit Union ($190-billion, 14.5 million member) had joined Curql Fund II. The investment window for Fund II closes July 31, 2025.

“We've looked at over 2,000 fintechs for a potential investment. We have Adam (Hughes) and Amount, it was our second investment out of Curql Fund II, the one that is currently fundraising. We also have an accelerator for early-stage companies, to draw fintech towards credit unions and a marketplace for adapting new technology to serve members and create efficiency for their back office,” said Ryan.

Connecting Credit Union to Fintechs

Ryan described Curql as a strategic investment fund that serves as a connector between credit unions and fintechs. To date, Curql investors have unlocked approximately $12 million in savings through negotiated fintech discounts, exclusive pricing, and early-access opportunities.

The Curql executive cited the impact of Robinhood, Chime, Rocket Mortgage, PayPal, Zelle and others. “All of these big fintech companies that are household names are disintermediating credit unions from their members. Instead of a member going to the local credit union, they are choosing to do business faster and easier with these big tech firms.”

The opportunity to partner with new fintech entrepreneurs with great solutions that need a receptive market is attracting credit unions, suggested Ryan. Curql investigates new companies looking for that strategic marketplace filled with potential partners, steps in to make an investment out of one of its funds and gives them a ready-made marketplace.

Ryan described Curql’s goal as wanting to help its credit unions to do business with the folks in their communities, their potential members or current members who choose to do business with them. “We actually have this chart we call our Swim Lane Chart, which has dozens of potential areas where credit unions could partner with fintech.”

Decluttering the Evolving Tech Stack

One of the more formable tasks credit unions deal with is addressing the evolving credit union tech stack where, in many cases, they are layering automation and digitization into legacy systems, Ryan explained. To make the transformation work, integrations need to incorporate application programming interfaces (APIs) or middleware solutions.

Curql works with PortX, an artificial intelligence (AI)-infused connectivity-as-a-service (CaaS) integration platform built for credit unions and banks. “Integration is one of the most important aspects of what we do in our community. We only have a small amount of influence there,” Ryan said.

But when credit unions are partnering with folks like PortX or working with fintechs that have APIs into their digital banking or into their core, that increases the speed at which they can release new products into market. “Then they are only held back by their own priority list and resources,” remarked Ryan.

Investing in Fintechs

One of the ways that Curql help its fintechs is by bringing them in front of a large group of credit unions, noted Ryan. “We call that our Curql bimonthly call. And we use that in a couple different ways. We have a dual mandate.”

Ryan explained, “We are absolutely looking at companies and they must pass a due diligence vetting process. But also, they have to pass a strategic value test for the credit unions. We only invest when both sides of that dual mandate, ROI and strategic value, are met. Once we have made the investment, we bring those companies back. They are going to have a couple of opportunities to get in front of credit unions.”

Ryan noted credit unions looking at potential solutions can collaborate with Curql. “We also developed a portal and a credit union can select the attributes that they are interested in, and then skinny down that number of fintechs to the ones that might solve their problem for them.”

The Role of Fintech Partnerships

In August 2024, Curql welcomed Amount, a Chicago-based SaaS platform, as a new strategic investor. “We are a little bit different because we started with big banks, partnering with large top 10, top 20 banks. We saw a massive opportunity to help in the credit union sector a few years ago,” said Hughes. “We now have a partnership with the largest credit union service organization in the country called Velera. But also saw a great opportunity to add Curql to our cap table as a strategic investor.”

Adam Hughes, CEO at Amount.

Hughes pointed out that a significant portion of Gen Z and millennials will leave their primary finance institution for a full unified digital experience. “So, we need to make sure for credit unions to continue to be competitive, that they have those table stakes, digital capabilities when opening basic banking products for their members. That does not mean that they lose that personalization. It does not mean that they lose that amazing customer service. Our job is to really showcase all the world class technology that exists around origination, around AI that you can leverage to better serve your members.”

Amount, explained Hughes, is a white labeled experience that is fully integrated. “We also have a partnership with the PortX; they are a middle layer that can provide overall integrate into the core.”

Front-End Upgrades and Backend Transformation

“There's lots of banks and credit unions that have a digital front end, but that can often just mean a digital application that kicks off into a heavy manual process,” said Hughes. “And so, if you are a member, a customer, a business owner in 2025 that is filling out an online application, but then waiting days, weeks to actually get an answer, I would argue that is really not a digital-first experience. What is really important here is you are partnering up a world-class digital experience from a mobile phone or a desktop experience that is going to allow you to apply for a bank or credit union product quickly and seamlessly get that immediate response and then get that funding here very quickly.”

There are specific strategies to make sure that digital connections becomes the major, interaction between credit unions and members, he added.

“From Amount's perspective, we are seeing partnership become a big strategy for financial institutions broadly. Post pandemic expectations for members, consumers, and business owners have changed. most banks or credit union have woken up to that reality and struggle to build these capabilities internally for a variety of reasons,” said Hughes. As a result, “we are seeing a big acceleration with banks and credit unions looking to do partnerships to deliver the right origination experience for their consumers and their members. That is number one.”

Hughes continued, “Number two, we are seeing AI really here to stay and impacting all parts of both internal workings at a company like mine at Amount, but also ability to provide better experiences for members and for business owners.” For example, the Amount AI (artificial intelligence) Policy Optimizer is a tool designed to help lenders, such as banks and credit unions, analyze and enhance their lending policies using artificial intelligence.

A Path for Smaller Credit Unions and VentureTech

Ryan explained there is a way for smaller or mid-size credit unions to invest. Envisant, a CUSO, has partnered with Curql to allow credit unions that cannot or do not want to make the minimum direct investment of $2 million to participate in Curql Fund II. Through the Envisant program, credit unions can invest smaller amounts (between $100,000 and $750,000). Only credit unions under $1 billion in assets qualify.

Ryan also noted that Curql hosts the eighth annual VentureTech, the credit union industry’s premier fintech showcase, Nov. 3-5, 2025 in Frisco, Texas at the Omni Frisco. The event gives fintechs the opportunity to pitch their products Shark Tank-style to an audience of credit union executives.