Tech People in the Know: FIntegrate CEO Kris Bishop

In what is a recurring feature, Finopotamus profiles interesting and intriguing tech professionals who are positively impacting the credit union industry.

For this issue, we visited with Kris Bishop, CEO of FIntegrate Technology. The Birmingham, Ala.-based fintech specializes in providing dispute management, collections and recovery software using transactional artificial intelligence (AI) and other automation for financial institutions.

By W.B. King

With a wink and a smirk, Kris Bishop said his wish as a kid was to own a dispute management and data conversion company. Turns out, the tech bug actually took hold much later in life, while studying computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “I’ve always enjoyed working in databases and process automation for some reason,” Bishop told Finopotamus. “I realized I wasn’t a programmer early in my college career; however, I enjoyed designing the database structure and data flows.”

Kris Bishop

Upon graduation, he was hired by BancTec where he learned back-office item processing and remittance processing to support operations for banks in Birmingham and Jackson, Miss. “I’ve always enjoyed solving problems with operational efficiency and there were plenty of opportunities in back-office banking to do that,” he noted. “I felt that I was making a difference and improving employees’ daily lives and the operations of the bank or credit union.”

The Bag and Drag Days

Bishop explained that in those days, circa 1995, paper checks were picked up at each branch every day and flown or driven to the main operation center where a large document scanner/sorter would process the checks and encode the MICR amounts on the bottom. These analog/manual operations, he noted, have changed quite a bit over the last 30 years.

“This only happened after a room full of people would run each debit and credit through a proof machine to create large batches that would be loaded into the sorter. Lots of operational logistics and people involved in moving each check each day from wherever in the world it was deposited back to the originating bank for processing,” he continued. “And this process could take up to 21 days for the check to clear.”

Today, thanks to smartphones, members can remote capture an image of the check and send it through for processing without leaving the comforts of my home, with checks clearing almost instantly in many cases.

“This sounds simple now that we have been doing it for several years but just like back in the old ‘bag and drag’ days, there are a lot of work and people that go into making the mobile deposit safe, secure and available to everyone,” he shared. “That’s a specific example; however, I think we are also seeing more technology people in the bank offices than bankers. This change has led the shift from the old way of thinking to the new technology-first, data-driven approach to banking operations, analytics and the end user experiences.” 

Helping People Learn and Grow

Among lessons Bishop learned along the way was how not to manage employees or co-workers. To this end, one leader once said to him: “If you overpaid employees, then you could treat them however you want.”

Conversely, an example of a strong leader, he said, was Lou Eppolito, an ex-banker turned consultant then vice president of implementations of a document solutions company at which they both worked.

“Lou treated people like individuals. Understanding that their personal lives, and the people in it were as important to the success of you and your position as your ability and knowledge,” Bishop reflected. “His door was always open, and he was ready to listen and provide advice based on his life experience. People worked to not disappoint Lou and not just for the job at hand. I have tried to lead my entire career from that perspective.”

Among management practices Bishop embraces is seeking and supporting well-rounded talent. “I want each person to excel and be successful both in their personal lives and goals and in their professional lives,” he said. “I try to hire the best, most overly qualified person I can find, then keep them entertained in the position while also helping them learn and grow into the person or position they would like to be in two or three years.”

Tangible Impact

Among recent company successes, Bishop noted, is bringing automated dispute management to community banks and credit unions with lean, multi-role teams. “These institutions that have historically had to manage disputes through spreadsheets, shared inboxes, and institutional knowledge tied to individual staff members can now automate the entire dispute process from intake through resolution and reporting.”

The need for these services, he noted, is significant. “Between 35 and 60% of community financial institutions are still managing disputes manually, and more than half report missing compliance deadlines in the previous 12 months when handling member transaction disputes,” he stated, noting that the company’s FusionDMS platform automates the entire dispute lifecycle—from intake through resolution, regulatory compliance and reporting, with built-in compliance deadline tracking, automated provisional credit workflows, and one-click audit-ready case histories.

“When something goes wrong, the cost is steep — a single examiner finding can require hundreds of hours of remediation and will impact the member, their financials and even the reputation of the credit union,” he continued. “Institutions that have made the switch to automated dispute systems are reducing exceptions by 40 to 70% and increasing production by as much as 80% over manual processing. We've seen institutions cut their exam prep time from several days to under an hour. That's a real, tangible impact on the operations teams doing this work every day.”

Staying Focused on Membership

The credit union industry’s member-first mandate, he said, sets it apart from larger institutions. This approach also informs how technology is viewed and adopted.

“At a big bank, technology decisions are often driven by scale and cost efficiency above all else. At a credit union, the question is always: How does this serve our members? That said, credit unions often carry an operational disadvantage because they're running lean teams where dispute management, collections, and compliance are one of many responsibilities rather than dedicated functions,” he shared. “The technology gap between what's available and what's actually been implemented at many community institutions is still significant.”

To close this gap, he said it is imperative that credit union find the right fintech partner because most organizations can’t build or maintain complex operating systems in-house.

“What makes a fintech partnership work is shared values and deep domain expertise. We've been doing data conversions and operations automation for financial institutions for more than 25 years. In that time, more than 5,000 financial institutions have trusted us with their image and data conversion needs,” he told Finopotamus. “For credit unions specifically, the right fintech partner isn't just a vendor — they're a guide helping navigate industry transitions so the institution can stay focused on its members.”