Three Credit Union CEOs Detail Their Digital Strategies for 2025 – The Financial Brand

As these three credit unions illustrate, the focus for many financial institutions in the coming year is upgrading their members’ digital experience. But the path to progress is different for each one.

PenFed, with $32.7 billion in assets, is one of the largest credit unions in the country, and it has more than 450,000 member logins to its digital channels every day. “About 95% of our engagements are digitally self-service,” says James Schenck, its president and chief executive officer.

PenFed wants to uplevel those already advanced digital tools to incorporate greater use of artificial intelligence. The intent is to make digital banking “more predictive and anticipatory,” Schenck says.

The $1.1 billion-asset EFCU Financial also wants to improve its digital channels, with greater personalization among the goals. While it may be playing catch-up compared to much larger credit unions like PenFed, it is taking on a multiyear mission that includes some massive projects.

“Historically, we’ve underinvested in this area, which is why 2025 will bring significant transformation,” says Tom Kuslikis, who joined EFCU Financial as the president and CEO in September 2023.

Already the credit union has a newly launched account-opening process that takes just a few minutes. It also has a new consumer and mortgage loan origination system. And looking further ahead, it is preparing for a conversion of its core system that is expected to go live in late 2026.

“This renewed focus reflects a leadership shift and the shared commitment of our board and senior team to provide a world-class member experience,” Kuslikis says.

Texas Trust introduced a new digital banking platform in 2024, and it plans to build on that milestone by implementing a faster and simpler account-opening process that eliminates some of the manual review happening now. It is also partnering with Zest AI to streamline the loan process and automate more decisions. And it is working with Zelle to bring the person-to-person payment service to its members.

Texas Trust CEO Jim Minge says he feels especially hopeful about these investments, given that interest rates are moderating. “We expect 2025 to be a year where we return to a more robust pace of growth, and we expect that continued improvements in our digital experience will add fuel to our growth opportunities.”

Read on to learn more about the strategies these credit unions are counting on to deepen relationships with existing members and attract new ones.