When the digital-only Alliant Credit Union in Chicago was looking to simplify the account-opening process for potential members, it looked for outside help.
"As we were examining a member or prospective member coming to our site and looking to open an account, there was friction in the process in terms of eligibility requirements, the speed at which you can open the account, the short components on the back end and more," said Sumeet Grover, chief digital and marketing officer at the $18 billion-asset Alliant. "From a member journey perspective and a channel perspective, there was no interaction between different channels and the whole process really felt disjointed."
Up to this point, the credit union addressed the issue through software patches and updates to the platform, but these were not long-term solutions.
"It became very clear that every time we had to do something on the platform, it was mostly a patch or an update and not true modernization. … That's where we started thinking about a partner who can maintain that level of high standards for member experience," Grover said.
Alliant formally debuted its partnership with
Through this collaboration, the credit union helped develop and pilot the fintech's MANTL for Credit Unions system. The new process automates the account opening process for consumers and businesses by integrating with banking core processors and using machine learning to parse and verify applicant data for eligibility requirements, compile channel usage data for marketing efficiency and simplify other procedures.
Nathaniel Harley, co-founder and chief executive of MANTL, explained how the platform helps financial institutions "de-silo" consumer-facing channels for submitting applications — addressing possible areas of friction during the onboarding process.
"At the end of the day, [the account application is] one of the first touchpoints that the member has with the institution and it's really important that from get-go, you are instilling confidence that you are an institution that can meet their digital needs," Harley said. "Any missteps there can result in essentially breaking that trust and ultimately losing business from the member."
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Since the product's launch, Alliant saw improvements in the time needed to open accounts as well as the percentage of new accounts funded at the time of sign up. It recently added share certificates on the platform as well, which are the credit union equivalent of certificates of deposit offered by banks.
By unifying each stream one-by-one rather than attempting to update all avenues at once, many
"What we're seeing a lot of folks do today is phasing those solutions over time so they can manage the expense. … They may start deploying in one channel [like web or mobile platforms] and later expand it to the contact center or the branches," said Jim Burson, managing director at Cornerstone Advisors and head of the firm's digital transformation and delivery channels practice. "There's very few implementations of an omnichannel solution that are done big bang, [but rather] they're almost always implemented piece-by-piece."
