JUDI.AI CEO Gord Baizley on Speed, Growth and the Small Business Opportunity

By Tylor Tourville

Throughout CU Business Group’s National Conference in Boston, keynotes, breakout sessions and attendee conversations in the hallways surfaced a consistent theme: Credit unions are facing intense pressure to compete in a small business market shaped by the fintech lenders and influenced by large banks. That reality was at the forefront in a breakout session led by JUDI.AI CEO Gord Baizley titled, How CUs Can Compete and Win in a Speed-First World.

JUDI.AI CEO Gord Baizley.

JUDI.AI is a fintech that helps credit unions automate and modernize their small business lending operations, with a focus on cash-flow analysis and AI-driven credit decisioning.

Following the session, Finopotamus spoke with Baizley about the trends reshaping small business lending and the opportunities he sees for credit unions.

Speed Is Reshaping Borrower Experiences

Baizley detailed the changing economics of small business lending over the last decade that have led small business borrowers to increasingly value speed and certainty over waiting weeks for a potentially lower-cost financing option. In his view, the industry has shifted from focusing on the cost of capital to what he described as the “cost of delay.”

According to data presented by Baizley, applications submitted to credit unions by small business borrowers have declined by almost 50% over the last decade, while applications to online lenders have increased by nearly the same percentage during the same period.

Competition is no longer predicated on rates, but speed and convenience shaped by the digital-first experiences fintech lenders have brought to the market. As Baizley noted, this has created a disconnect between the hearts and minds of the small business borrowers.

While speed and convenience are top of mind when applying for credit products, satisfaction is a post-borrowing event. Two charts, he explained, juxtaposed from the same small business survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank illustrated this point. One chart showed credit unions far surpassing banks and fintech lenders in borrower satisfaction. The other chart showed credit unions dead last in terms of credit sources applied to by small business borrowers.

The takeaway, Baizley explained, is that credit unions can learn a lot from the fintech lenders when it comes to removing friction from the borrower experience and capitalizing on their unique advantages to sustainably grow their small business membership base.

Credit Unions Are Chasing the Wrong Benchmark

Baizley believes that many credit unions approach small business lending through the lens of commercial real estate, where minimizing losses is often the primary objective. Given the prominent place commercial real estate takes in portfolios, this is a natural tendency, he added. Small business lending, however, behaves differently. Rather than seeking zero losses, institutions should focus on risk-adjusted returns and their ability to serve more members who may fall outside traditional underwriting criteria, he noted. "This is a different market where it's more like a consumer credit card, where you should expect to have some losses and price for them.”

During the presentation, Baizley described what he sees as one of the biggest opportunities for credit unions: serving otherwise creditworthy small businesses that fall outside rigid underwriting models used by larger institutions and some fintech lenders. Rather than competing for the safest borrowers, he argued that credit unions can differentiate themselves by saying "yes" more often to viable businesses that need flexibility and support.

While this approach may seem out of touch with the core mission and values of the credit union movement, Baizley argues that it’s more about having the mindset of “being able to serve more members."

Thinking Like a Fintech Doesn’t Mean Becoming One

Credit unions can learn and apply these noted lessons from the fintech lenders without abandoning their member-first missions, he said. Many fintech lenders, Baizley offered, have sharpened the way they analyze things such as customer acquisition cost, lifetime value and payback periods, while credit unions have historically focused more on service and member outcomes. "For fintech lenders, they have everything down to a formula in terms of what they would spend to acquire someone, what they would expect to get out of that, how they would go about extracting that value…that is almost to a credit union, I think, almost an offensive way to look at the world."

In Baizley's view, understanding those metrics allows credit unions to invest more confidently in acquiring and serving small business members, rather than treating each lending decision as an isolated transaction. This shift in mindset isn’t just for the sake of seizing short-term opportunity or chasing the latest trend. The ones that embrace this way of thinking have the potential to build long-term growth and stability in their commercial portfolios.

JUDI.AI’s flagship client, Vancity Credit Union (CA$31.5 billion), the largest community credit union in Canada with over 588,000 members, is an example, Baizley said. He pointed to Vancity's nine-year journey to grow its small business portfolio to more than CA$400 million today as evidence that a more data-driven approach can succeed. According to Baizley, one of the key lessons Vancity shares with peers is that it wishes it had trusted the model sooner.

For Baizley, adopting these business disciplines does not require credit unions like Vancity to abandon their cooperative roots. Rather, it requires them to become more intentional about identifying, acquiring and serving businesses that could benefit from the products and services they already offer.

Growth and Member Service Are not in Conflict

Perhaps the most memorable observation from Baizley's presentation centered on the relationship between pricing and member service. For credit unions accustomed to viewing lower rates as a proxy for member value, risk-based pricing can feel uncomfortable. But he argued that the proper comparison is not always against the lowest possible rate. It is against the alternatives small business owners are already using. "You could be giving somebody a 15% loan and doing them a hell of a favor compared to what their options [are].”

Credit unions, he added, do not need to abandon their member-first philosophy to compete more aggressively for small business relationships. In his view, they need to become more confident in the value they already provide. "They should be proud of and confident in their product," Baizley said. "They have the best product and service for these businesses."

For Baizley, growth is not at odds with the credit union mission. If credit unions genuinely offer better outcomes for small businesses, expanding their reach simply means helping more members access those benefits.

He underscored that many institutions are sitting on the data, trust and member relationships they need to identify small business owners inside their existing membership bases. "You have the data, you're sitting on the relationship, [and] you have the service model that everybody else doesn't have."

Several of JUDI.AI's credit union clients have already begun applying that approach in practice, including its partnership with Steinbach Credit Union (SCU), an CA$11-billion Manitoba-based institution that serves more than 110,000 members. With the support of JUDI.AI, he explained that SCU ran a pre-qualification campaign targeting existing members with credit offers. Starting with a pool of 617 members submitted for scoring, SCU applied additional filters and sent offers to 250 qualifying members. Of those, 86 accepted and were funded, representing a 34% conversion rate and $6.4 million in new approved credit.

“Those are your members… going elsewhere,” Baizley cautioned. “Once they go, it’s going to be hard to pull that back.” For credit unions, he noted the challenge is not opportunity but rather execution. The institutions that succeed will be the ones that move quickly enough to capitalize on the relationships, data and member trust they already possess, he offered.