PenFed Partners with InvestiFi to Offer Embedded Investing to Members

By Roy Urrico

The $29.3 billion McLean, Va.-based Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed), one of the nation’s largest credit unions, announced a new partnership with InvestiFi to bring embedded investing capabilities directly to its almost 2.8 million members. The integration enables members to fund investments directly from their checking accounts and view both banking and investment balances in one place.

InvestiFi, a Dover, Del.-based CUSO, allows credit union members to invest in stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), robo advisors and crypto, from online and mobile banking. Once the investment capabilities launch mid-summer, PenFed members can access digital investing services.

“Our members have come to expect world-class service and that includes the ability to bank and invest on the same platform," said PenFed EVP of Member Operations and Global Fixed Assets Jamie Gayton in the announcement. "By partnering with InvestiFi we are able to deliver a seamless experience allowing members to invest out of the same checking accounts they use for their everyday spending needs.” Gayton maintained PenFed is committed to delivering innovative, member-focused solutions that make investing approachable and accessible, as part of its mission to help members achieve their financial dreams.

Kian Sarreshteh, CEO of InvestiFi.

“We see users on third-party investment platforms demonstrating the behavior to sacrifice yield on their cash deposits, for the convenience of investing from checking," said Kian Sarreshteh, CEO of InvestiFi. “This partnership will help members feel confident, inspired, and empowered as they engage with their finances. Investing can be intimidating, but together with PenFed, we’re creating experiences that make exploring financial opportunities approachable, seamless, and meaningful.”

Key expected benefits to PenFed members include:

• Robust resources - self-directed securities investing, a guided investing robo-advisory service, and comprehensive financial education resources.

• Seamless experience - funding investments directly from existing checking accounts and viewing balances within digital banking, eliminating the need for external logins or fragmented workflows.

Sarreshteh discussed with Finopotamus the significance of providing investment capabilities to PenFed and other credit unions.

Idle Cash on Balance Sheet

InvestiFi provides a consistent flow of funds across products through investing from checking – “where the member does not need a separate funding account, they simply use their existing checking account to buy and sell assets on the platform,” Sarreshteh explained. “For the credit union, this means all the idle cash waiting to be invested, now sits on their balance sheet, and not a third-party brokerage balance sheet.”

InvestiFi also has built a custom education platform, “where we have an internal content management system that serves up robust education journeys for members with content coming pre-approved from the broker dealer InvestiFi owns called InvestiFi Securities,” Sarreshteh said.

PenFed members simply log on to their online or mobile banking app, to access robust text and video education content before even onboarding, at no cost to them, explained Sarreshteh. “When they do onboard, the process is streamlined compared to third-party apps, given InvestiFi pulls the member’s data from the banking core to reduce the amount of manual entries required from the member.”

After members onboard, he added that they don’t need to transfer money to any investment account. They can start investing from their existing checking account seconds after logging on.

Delivering InvestiFi

Sarreshteh also conveyed how the cloud-based InvestiFi platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), uses application programming interfaces (APIs). A credit union or third-party digital banking provider can display balance summary data on the main online or mobile banking account summary page.

“The full investing experience is delivered typically through an iframe (an HTML element that embeds an external webpage or document within the current page) and then authenticates the member via SSO (single sign-on),” noted Sarreshteh. In some digital banking environments, he added, InvestiFi has a natively built experience with the SDK (software development kit) of the digital banking provider.

“Where we expect to see accelerated results, given the brand and marketing engine PenFed has benchmarked (compared) to most other credit unions,” said Sarreshteh. “But even with the credit unions we’ve been live with to date, we’re seeing a positive impact on two key fronts.”

Sarreshteh claimed:

1. “First, more and more members have stopped transferring money to third party investment apps like Robinhood, and have started to invest through their credit union, driving deposits and non-interest income back to the credit union.”

2. “Second, we’ve heard countless anecdotes of people walking in off the street to deposit a six-figure sum into a credit union deposit account, so they can invest through a credit union – which is what’s encouraging to me for credit unions to remain competitive long term.”

Sarreshteh continued, “If credit unions adopt digital investing, they have a similar experience to Robinhood for example, but have the differentiator of trust, community, physical branches and humans you can talk to if something goes wrong. So, it will be interesting to see how credit unions take market share back from the third-party investment platforms over the coming years.”

Reaching Summit

InvestiFi has also partnered recently with the $209 million Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Summit Choice Credit Union to bring digital investing tools to its 11,354 members through the credit union’s online and mobile banking platforms.

Summit Choice President and CEO Diane Scherer: “This partnership is a natural extension of our mission to transform lives in our community by providing financial wellness for all. We believe access to investing should be approachable, understandable, and available to every member—not just a select few. By combining personalized guidance with accessible technology, we’re helping remove barriers and create new opportunities for long-term financial growth.”

InvestiFi currently has 49 financial institutions, including over 40 credit unions, onboarded with its investment platform.