In today’s hyper-competitive market, community loyalty alone can’t compete with instant point-of-sale loan approvals. To fight back, legacy credit unions are turning their online platforms into high-volume “fifth branches” that automate compliance and accelerate underwriting.
About the Credit Union: Bulkley Valley Credit Union is an 80-year-old, community-focused financial institution operating in northern British Columbia. Deeply rooted in relational banking and local decision-making, the organization is currently modernizing its digital infrastructure to balance legacy, high-touch member service with high-tech convenience.
Bulkley Valley Credit Union is a partner of Intellect Design Arena. In the conversation with Jessica Morettie, VP, Client Partnerships, Intellect Design Arena, Tony Dunham discusses how Bulkley Valley recently chose Intellect’s digital banking and loan origination platform and is translating 80 years of community-focused leadership into digital-age innovation.
Bulkley Valley Credit Union has served members across its community for more than 80 years. Its biggest driver has been solely focused on knowing its community and everyone in it, where bricks and mortar was almost considered the same thing as a grocery store—part of their members’ day and weekly routines.
As Bulkley Valley enters its next phase, the credit union is implementing Intellect’s digital banking and loan origination platform to build digital capabilities that amplify relationship, not replace it—preserving the human connection and local decision-making at its core.
Jessica: So, we’ve had multiple conversations over the last while about technology. What I want to start with today is thinking back a bit to when you were in the process of making this decision and kind of where your headspace was at that point in time.
Tony Dunham: Well, yeah, great question. Obviously being in the credit union space, we’ve had our ups and our downs. We’ve had our challenges obviously with technology and third-party vendors. And so from Bulkley Valley’s perspective, our biggest driver for the last 80 years has been really solely focused in on we know our community, we know everybody in our community. Bricks and mortar was almost kind of considered the same thing as a grocery store. People would come in, it was part of their day and their weekly routines.
But from a technology standpoint, going through this process was: how do we find ourselves aligned with a vendor that thinks the same way we do? Who actually has a lot of the same core values we have as an organization and is looking to not necessarily just scale a solution, but is actually looking to partner with the credit union in this situation that wants to grow and expand and learn, and allow us to be able to actually be part of the solution, part of the destiny, and actually take some guidance and try to make sure we’re preserving our value proposition around being different in the community, not losing sight of relationships, and obviously trying to find a partner that will help to enable and excel our organization.
Jessica: Thinking forward for the next decade, what’s important when you’re thinking about serving your members when you look forward for your organization?
Tony Dunham: As an organization, obviously we’re community-focused, and our profits stay within our communities. I always explain this to staff that banking as a whole has really become a commodity at the end of the day. So what does that really mean? Every institution offers the same products and services. Really, it’s going to come down to, especially in a small community, how we differentiate ourselves from the bank on the corner.
convenience, and accessibility with that personalized compassion. The ability to be able to take the time and try different solutions and different paths. Some may work, some may not, but be able to have the ability to be creative with our members’ needs and be able to find a way to truly, hopefully, give them the comfort of knowing that we’re in their corner all the way through the different stages of their problems.
Jessica: Are there any other non-negotiables regardless of how technology evolves that you see in terms of serving your members?
Tony Dunham: Ultimately for us, we’re in the business of people and in the business of relationships. From a non-negotiable standpoint, from a staff perspective, we’re not abandoning the community. Local decision-making is something that’s very critical and near and dear to the heart. So it’s one of our differentiations, but also having the capability of not becoming robotic. There’s always that concern that we’re going to become hyper-digital, people are going to have to self-serve, and they’re not going to have somebody available for them. And so, a non-negotiable for us is we’re not abandoning the community. And what that means is we’re not letting people go, but we’re not replacing them with technology.
If anything, what we’re trying to do is actually trying to find a way to accelerate our business so that we can actually retrain, retool, and reinvest in our people so that we can actually grow and expand our business. So people are non-negotiable. This isn’t a strategy around operational efficiency by removing staff. It’s about trying to figure out how we can reallocate time and gain back time so that we can actually invest and double down with our people and the training that is needed to be able to deal with people’s problems. Because they’re only getting more and more complex and more and more difficult these days.
Jessica: When you think about it from the perspective of Bulkley Valley and yourself and your role, what do you see as success there for digital transformation that you’re undertaking?
Tony Dunham: For us success is not about getting things perfect. We as an organization have always fallen into the trap that this is always the way we’ve done it. And to be very honest, as an organization, over time we had not been spending a lot of investment in technology and tools and taking the time to actually talk to our staff a little bit about, “Talk to us. What are some of your pain points in your day?”
Because of the hyper-competitive market that’s out there, due to the fact that members actually have choices, they have multiple products and services available to them through technology, so it doesn’t have to be in our community. And we’re constantly being challenged to the point where when they need something, we, as a credit union, seem to define it under our bricks and mortar. What it really means is if you have a problem, make sure you bring it to us between 9:00 and 5:00. And so what we as an organization have to do, and what our staff have been telling us, is that members are feeling restricted and staff are not having the tools in front of them. They find their eyes spending more time on administration and paperwork and less time with their eyes up and building relationships and connecting with their members.
So from our standpoint, transformation really is about wanting to instill a voice into our staff. This isn’t a top-down initiative; this is a bottom-up rebuild. And as leaders, as much as we want to say that we feel like we have all the answers, we don’t. We don’t live and eat and breathe the day in the life of our staff. So more importantly, our staff are the most connected to the member.
So transformation to us is about helping our staff understand the why, help them to be part of the solution, and encourage them to fail fast and fail forward. We know we’re not going to get it right. This is a journey and not a destination. So from our standpoint for transformation, the question is, can we actually have our staff feel like they have a voice? Because we feel it’ll get us closer to connecting to the voice of the member, and more importantly, if the staff are part of the solution, they’ll own it. And that will help to give them a little bit more confidence in what they’re doing, and that should portray into a solid brand for us as an organization.
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Jessica: Do you see any differences in a definition of success for a digital transaction versus an in-branch transaction?
Tony Dunham: I think ultimately for us, yeah, there are definitely some metrics that we’re kind of working through. It’s around, financially, as an organization, if we can solve for time—ultimately if we can get that loan underwritten, procured, and put on the books in half the time—that has a lot of financial benefit to us as an organization. So, not only do we become efficient, we’re actually accelerating the time that’s on the books. So, it’s obviously generating revenue, and it just helps our whole financial model.But from a staff perspective, I think the biggest metrics for us are how do we get back to the basics and how do we find 80% of our processes that are going to help us accelerate and scale our business, and we’re going to forget about the 20%. Because if we try to strive for perfection and solve for everything, we won’t achieve anything. So it’s about just breaking it down into small chunks, encouraging people to try new ideas, and then if it doesn’t work, we just continually tweak it because it’s more of a journey instead of a destination.
Jessica: When you think about that and you’re talking to a small local cafe owner versus a personal member of a larger business, what are they asking for now that they weren’t maybe asking for 5 years ago?
Tony Dunham: Well, so we have this philosophy; we’re pushing our staff and our organization to (question) how we become that financial institution of choice or how we own Main Street. In small communities everybody’s got a Main Street. But what we are hearing from our members is operationally it’s becoming harder and harder for them to be able to take time to move away from their shop between 9 and 5 to come and see us. Typically when they’re having their biggest challenges financially or they’re trying to figure out solutions, it’s 9, 10, 11:00 at night and of course we are not open or available.
So members were looking for not necessarily having to talk to somebody, but they wanted to have a reliable platform that they could go in, that they could start telling us a bit of their story, and that we were able to either give them the tools to start self-identifying some of the solutions or paths of consideration. But more importantly, we would have a tool or a platform that we could actually gather information so that we could actually circle back with them in the morning and come by their shop and talk to them. And that’s the other component on the business side of it, as even on the retail side, is our members and generations are busy. They’re living busy lives. So they want to be able to talk to us, and we need to be able to provide products and services to them through an omni-channel perspective.
All our policies and procedures have been built around “You must come and see us”; “Your signature needs to be—we need ink to paper”; and “We need to see your identification.” Everything we’re doing is more regulatory and compliance-related, and we have not evolved that with the actual consumer, especially pre-COVID. COVID was a reset moment, and all generations were impacted by this, and their comfort level around technology and tools like biometrics and their ability to provide some very personal information online and feel safe and secure have changed. But we as an organization had realized very quickly that we hadn’t evolved with that. And so the restrictive nature that we’ve brought has caused people on Main Street to start raising questions around are we actually investing dollars back into helping them be successful, because they’re actually investing in their businesses, but they don’t see the same reciprocal experience happening to them? So, it’s time for us to up our game. If they don’t see it or they can’t experience it, then when they pose the question, “Is the money staying locally? Are decisions being made locally?” It starts to raise a reputational risk perspective, and so this is an opportunity for us now to remove that noise. And most importantly, I think right now is we need to mobilize our staff because it’s becoming more and more difficult for people to come in and see us, so we need to figure out how to go to them.
Jessica: You’ve chosen to focus first on the digital platform and then, from there, look at modernizing your lending journey. Can you share a bit about your thinking in terms of the order of approach there?
Tony Dunham: Yeah. So operationally we’re trying to take our in-branch experiences and we’re looking at trying to digitize or take a digital-first approach. What we’ve realized is you need to have the foundational piece of the platform, really starting with digital and looking at it from an online banking perspective. So, if we can allow our members to actually log in, authenticate, be able to have a variety of different options available to them—they can do it self-serve or move it even into some type of partially assisted type of approach and allow different business units of our organization to be able to see what’s going on in real time and help them—we found that that was kind of the most critical first step.
Looking at it from a standpoint of, you know, we have some small communities we represent, and we’ve got four key locations that members have been accustomed to going into, but when you collectively look at online banking, it is our fifth branch. It collectively houses and services all of our members. So, if we can actually figure out how to create the highest volume and the busiest branch and actually digitize that environment and get people comfortable with it, then that will actually free us up and buy some time to be able to figure out how to modernize and trickle this down into the community. So digital was a very critical piece because ultimately our past experiences in the environment, it was safe and secure but it was limited in what members could do. And so what we were finding is that members were now seeking other services, products, and platforms that were making their lives easier. So this will hopefully help us to bring back some of the members and their share of wallet and their products and their loyalty to us.
But on the lending side of it, it just became natural that in today’s day and age, when we talked to our members, we surveyed them and asked them to determine what the most frequent lending product was that they actually went out and acquired in the last 24 months. And it was a combination between a car loan and, in our situation, obviously being up north, it was like whether an RV, an ATV, or a side-by-side fun vehicle type of thing. But when we asked them why they didn’t come to see us about the loan, they said, “Well, when I bought it at the dealership, it was just an extension of their service, and it took literally minutes, and they were approved, and they were actually walking away with the vehicle.” If they were to come and see us, there would have been a delayed process, potentially run the risk of not getting the vehicle or losing out on it. So what we heard from that was convenience is extremely important, and our members want to know when they’re ready to buy something and they’re emotionally committed to it, so speed is very important. So of course, we know in our organization that lending is a critical piece for us around sustainability. So we needed to figure out how to be in that space digitally and make things quick.
Jessica: What do you think some of those biggest hurdles are when you think about the lending workflow that you have today that you’re looking to modernize?
Tony Dunham: Well, part of it is we have a couple challenges that we’re facing today. As an organization, we’ve been around 80 years. We’ve had some very committed staff. We’ve had some very long-tenured staff. Leading up to COVID, I would say that we probably had our staff average—our tenure was probably north of 17 years on average. And we had, over the years, a lot of skill sets that had been attained through that process. Coming out of COVID and through the changes, we as an organization started to see retirements happening and some impacts to our business.
So going out and looking for resources wasn’t the challenge. It was about finding resources that actually had the knowledge and the expertise and the understanding. And that’s when we actually started to realize that we’re not actually solving necessarily for—although our members want ease of access and products—if they come into the bricks and mortar, we don’t necessarily have that 30-year tenured lending officer who understands all the complexities and decision-making, and our business model was very manual in nature. So we as an organization talk about local decision-making. The crux of this was we needed to solve for knowledge. We needed to be able to find a way to increase the agility and speed in our organization, but at the same time we had to make sure that we didn’t paint a picture that we were losing our local decision-making. That ultimately our staff had an opportunity to build relational pricing, not necessarily focused in on some lending matrix and some risk ratio and scoring that came out that made it impersonal.
So as an organization, we needed to find a way to partner with an organization that could help us bring that personal touch, be able to use the tools and the technology and help us build a narrative that could then translate into an actual product or a solution that was very easy for our members to complete. And why that was important is if we can simplify the process and allow a member to drive that process and get to some form of a decision, that started to answer one of our biggest challenges, and that was we don’t have to worry about the knowledge. We need to focus in on hiring people who want to build relationships or are very good at building relationships, who are good listeners, and who are able to actually help guide and build trust very quickly with our members. Ultimately if the technology itself can get us the decision that we need, what is most difficult is how you deliver that decision, and the context and the narrative behind how you deliver it are very critical. So now we’re actually solving for—we’re able to double down on our communities. We’re hiring more staff. We’re spending more time on the retail kind of experience and focused on our brand versus the actual credit knowledge. So this relationship with Intellect has really helped us now to actually kind of change a little bit around our approach around how we actually build a fun, engaging, efficient, and effective organization.
Jessica: When you look at technology where you want to embed AI or you have technology making some of those decisions and whatnot, what’s your kind of litmus test to say, “What’s something that’s going to work within the confines of still keeping true to that local decision-making but also using technology?”
Tony Dunham: Some of the biggest challenges that we’re facing right now is regulatory pressure, of course. So if we can get a platform that is continually finding ways to evaluate the stages of the application you’re going through, help us from a quality control management perspective, and make sure that accuracy of documentation and that professionalism layout at the end of the day that we’re looking to try and achieve—I see AI can help create and can do the quality checks and balances that we need to make sure that the application is meeting all the regulatory pieces that we’re being measured on. We don’t need our staff to be continually having to circle back, and ultimately we shouldn’t have to—our staff shouldn’t have to currently today; if they have to go in and manipulate a form, they’re actually increasing the risk to the organization and to the member. And we’re human, and we get busy, and sometimes there are errors; well, obviously errors happen.
I think we learned today; obviously, it’s not really a mistake. It’s more of a blind spot. Well, I think as an organization thinking about that today, there are tools that will behind the scenes be able to help identify those blind spots a lot quicker, and we as an organization will be able to put the controls in place and tighten those very quickly. Again, to me, that ties back to our members’ knowing why local decisions are important because they know that we have their back; they can trust us. We’re willing to take ownership of those decisions that are there.
So I think AI is two things: it’s going to help us standardize and optimize. But most importantly, I think when we communicate with our members, what we’re looking for is whether we can identify trends. Can we learn some of the behaviours of our members? Can we use this information intelligently to start personalizing that relationship and proactively reach out to those members? That’s what we used to do when we had time in the day. Now we’re actually busy spending all our time focused on administration. We aren’t getting to those personalized, proactive conversations, which we need for share of wallet. So I’m hoping from an AI standpoint it’s going to help us come full circle but hopefully allow us to fight a little bit higher—above our weight class—and allow us to be able to compete with the big banks because we’re using very similar tools. And I think that if we can actually build that share of wallet and that loyalty, I think we’re going to be a hard organization to knock off in the local community, on Main Street.
Jessica: You had a tour of our Intellect Design centre here in Chennai a little bit earlier this afternoon. Any reflections on that from the tour today, Tony?
Tony Dunham: Well, it was interesting. I think we live in a world where everybody thinks you’re going to knock it out of the park. But what I learned today is that we’re not alone and it’s okay to make mistakes. Really at the end of the day when you look at them, they’re learning opportunities
If we are encouraging people to be creative, recognizing everybody is slightly different, today taught me that it’s really important that we continue to focus on relationships. As a credit union, we do this with our members every day. We need to be doing it with our staff. We need to spend more time listening and give them the opportunity to be part of the solution, part of the why. We’re stronger together as a team than we are individually is really what I took out of today. And it starts with communication and openness, and we can leverage the power of multiple voices in the organization. So those are some of the things that I learned or confirmed or kind of had some affirmation of what we’re doing through, and it’s okay. We know that we’re not going to knock this out of the park. And I guess ultimately I’m walking away here knowing that Intellectunderstands the pains that we’re going through, and we probably should be able to partner and lean on each other, and we’ll figure out a successful solution for both our organizations.
Jessica: Can you share a bit about the elements that you were looking for in terms of a partner, things that you saw in Intellect that led to your decision to move forward with us?
Tony Dunham: Yeah, I think from an Intellect standpoint, obviously as a system, our role coming in and obviously helping to scale a product and a solution into Canada was important. But I look at it from a vendor standpoint as an investment—so knowledge and investment. Clearly Intellect has a really strong roadmap, has a really strong vision around the ecosystem of banking, and has a passion for the Canadian market, which was something that was definitely very appreciated and obviously opened up a lot of doors to some discussion. And I think obviously putting their money where their mouth is. And what I mean by that is coming in and actually seeing an opportunity to help solve for a big problem in the industry, and that was obviously the transition of our previous supplier and being able to help credit unions actually maintain what they have today until they can figure out a path forward.
I had a lot of respect for the risk that Intellect took on, stepping up. But at the end of the day, ultimately it’s been a challenging industry, and there’s no guarantee. So I think taking a step up, the gamble, and the investment in Canada is important. But what we did realize as we went through this process is that there’s a lot of knowledge here, a lot of experience; they bring a global perspective to things. Which is, I think, something very important for Canadians: we have a tendency to just look within our bubble, and we don’t necessarily look at what’s going on around the world. We are experiencing as an organization; immigration has had a very positive impact on us. So bringing a global perspective to things and an understanding of some of the different types of systems that are available in the world and open banking—those were some of the key drivers for helping us look at Intellect.
Jessica: Looking 12 to 18 months into the future, as you plan to layer on loan origination, what subtle successes are you hoping to see regarding positive changes for both your staff and members?
Tony Dunham: I think a big win from a member perspective is that they actually see us making the investment in the right tools to be competitive. I think that having a community focus and continually being that kind of community-minded local decision-making are all great, but these are not sustainable success factors or KPIs going forward. We live in a world where it’s high touch, high expectations. A lot of stuff is really technology-driven, and these have become table stakes, and our members are using other solutions out in the marketplace. It’s just a matter of time if we don’t start doubling down and investing in these right areas, we will eventually have a challenge of growing in our communities.
So I think the silent wins for us are hopefully we’re able to showcase that we’re actually, as a profitable organization, investing our dollars into the infrastructure because we care. And we’re building an organization that’s going to have to go beyond the next 80 years. We recognize that if we don’t make this investment in our brand and everything that we have stood for for the past 80 years, that legacy could come to an end. So this is really important for us about redefining, reconnecting, and refocusing our energies and our direction as an organization. Owning Main Street. That’s very important. These communities, a lot of the big banks, especially where we are, love to come up here from a deposit standpoint, but when it comes to taking on elements of risk, they don’t. So we have an opportunity. There’s a lot of pride in the small local, you know, buy local, be local, invest in the community, and we play a big role in that. We want to make sure we can continue doing that.
A perspective from:
Tony Dunham,
Chief Operating Officer,
Bulkley Valley Credit Union
