The Top 5 Finopotamus Webinars of 2025
- Finn O'Potamus
- Dec 27, 2025
- 5 min read
By Finn O’Potamus
As 2025 comes to a close, Finopotamus is taking a look back at the most impactful discussions from our webinar series. These sessions brought together fintech pioneers and credit union innovators to tackle the evolving challenges of data activation, security, member experience, and core technology. While the topics varied, a consistent theme emerged: the need for credit unions to reclaim autonomy over their technology stacks to better serve their communities. All five of these top-rated webinars were moderated by John San Filippo, publisher of Finopotamus.
Webinars are presented in order of viewer popularity.
Credit Union Growth Unleashed: Data Strategies for Today’s Economy
This session addressed the critical shift from simply collecting “big data” to strategically activating information to drive growth in an uncertain economy. The panel—featuring Anne Legg from THRIVE, Gordon Flammer from Kinective, and Chris DePietro from Mole Street—discussed how credit unions can leverage their unique data to provide financial certainty and personalized experiences that differentiate them from larger institutions.
The Activation Gap: Anne Legge emphasized that collecting data is not the same as activating it. A true data strategy must be business-wide and holistic, moving beyond technical solutions to harness insights for direct action.
Data as a Gold Mine: Gordon Flammer explained that credit unions sit on “gold mines” of reliable member data—specifically transaction tables—that can reveal a member’s values and life milestones, such as buying a home or starting a business.
The AI Revolution: Flammer also noted that the success of AI is driven not by computer technology alone, but by the sheer amount of high-quality, curated data used to train models. Credit unions are uniquely positioned to utilize their existing reliable data to better serve members.
Normalization Challenges: Chris DePietro highlighted that many credit unions use between five and 50 different platforms, making it essential to normalize and transform data across these sources to drive higher-quality marketing and CRM efforts.
Actionable Starting Points: To overcome initial paralysis, the panel recommended an “agile” methodology: picking small, specific wins to achieve in 90 to 180 days—such as identifying member friction points like password resets—rather than attempting overwhelming, multi-year projects.
Protecting Members, Preserving Trust: Modern Approaches to Fraud Prevention
The fraud landscape has changed rapidly, with the total impact of every dollar lost reaching $4.41 for North American financial institutions. This session featured Rebecca Alanis from Lone Star Credit Union, David Campbell from Scale AI, and Mike Duncan from Bankjoy to explore why traditional, reactive approaches are no longer sufficient to combat AI-powered fraud.
Proactive vs. Reactive: Rebecca Alanis shared how real-time monitoring through tools like FraudSense allowed her institution to catch “new account fraud” as it occurred, rather than reviewing batch reports hours later when funds were already gone.
AI as a Double-Edged Sword: David Campbell warned that Large Language Models (LLMs) allow bad actors with no coding experience to “vibe code” perfect phishing sites and automate attacks in minutes. This necessitates an additive security approach that uses AI as a defensive layer.
Trust as Currency: Mike Duncan noted that while security measures are essential, they must be balanced with member experience. Using behavioral analytics to detect suspicious activity behind the scenes allows for a detection model that prompts for verification only when suspicious activity is identified.
The Trust Advantage: Maintaining a high bar of trust is becoming a primary competitive advantage, as members increasingly value institutions that protect them from deepfakes and sophisticated social engineering.
Winning the Dispute Battle: Accelerate Resolution, Maximize Recoveries, and Build Unshakeable Member Trust
Managing disputes is often a manual, high-stress burden for credit unions. This session focused on how digital transformation and automation can turn dispute management into an opportunity for member advocacy and operational efficiency, featuring Darius Alcaire from BECU and Rex Richardson from Quavo.
Automation ROI: Darius Alcaire detailed how the Quavo (QFD) platform enabled his team to automate 90% to 95% of chargebacks, provisional credits, and letters. This allowed BECU to scale its operations without adding new staff.
Regulatory Safeguards: Rex Richardson highlighted the platform’s built-in “reg gates” for compliance with Reg E and Reg Z. These automated controls ensure that deadlines are never missed even during high-volume fraud events, leading to cleaner audit exams.
Same-Day Credit: Automation allows institutions to issue same-day credit for trusted members while flagging “habitual disputers” for manual review. Richardson and Alcaire noted this is vital for members who need access to funds for groceries or bills during vulnerable times.
Efficiency First: Alcaire advised credit unions to use Lean Six Sigma to remove waste from their processes before automating, ensuring that the technology is layered over a streamlined workflow rather than an inefficient one.
Digital Banking at a Crossroads: Make Sure You’re Headed the Right Direction
Digital banking has evolved from a convenience to a credit union’s primary brand identity. The panel, featuring Josh DeTar and Rick Horio from Tyfone, discussed moving beyond “table stakes” features toward radical personalization based on a member’s relationship with their money.
Verified Identity: Josh DeTar introduced the concept of cryptographic device authorization, which turns a member’s phone into a secure hardware token. By knowing with certainty who is logging in, credit unions can offer custom, higher transaction limits to trusted members.
Conversational Concierge: Rick Horio demonstrated the AskPenny AI tool, a large language model search engine that understands natural language queries like “How much did I spend eating out last month?” or spoken money movement instructions.
The FedNow Shift: DeTar noted that since the launch of instant payments, weekend volumes now eclipse Friday volumes. Members have abandoned traditional “queueing” because they can now settle and reconcile funds instantly in four to six seconds.
Social Impact: The panel also discussed the Java for Kids initiative, noting that if just 1% of US credit union members bought one bag of coffee, it would generate $7 million annually for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
Unlocking Innovation: Building the Future of Credit Union Tech with Composable Architecture
This session looked at the future of core processing, featuring Amber Harsin and Chad Thomas from Mambu. The discussion contrasted legacy “monolithic” systems with modern “composable” architecture that grants credit unions radical autonomy over their technology.
Defining Composable: Amber Harsin described the core as a “nerve center” focusing solely on member information, the ledger, and transaction posting. This allows credit unions to “plug and play” best-of-breed third-party tools via APIs.
Eliminating Vendor Lock-in: Chad Thomas explained that standardized APIs allow credit unions to “unplug” a solution that no longer fits their needs and plug in a new one in weeks without a full core conversion or being beholden to a single provider’s roadmap.
The Speedboat Strategy: Harsin suggested that instead of a full “rip and replace,” credit unions can launch a separate digital brand or a specific product line—such as small business lending—on a modern core to innovate quickly without disrupting legacy members.
Cloud Native vs. Cloud Hosted: The panel clarified that “cloud native” means software was built specifically for the cloud for automatic scaling and high availability. This provides the foundational data access required to leverage future advancements in AI and quantum computing.
If you think these sessions are insightful, wait until you see what we have in store for 2026. We are already lining up an even more amazing slate of webinars featuring the boldest movers and shakers in fintech. From deep dives into the next generation of AI to radical new strategies for member engagement, Finopotamus is committed to keeping you at the absolute forefront of the industry with webinars that matter.