Long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a
Their timing was fortuitous. When the pandemic hit in early 2020, operations ranging from
The $889 million-asset Hoosier Hills deployed Q2's digital banking software in June 2020.
The "timing was both incredibly complex, but also fortunate in the sense that the need to be mobile and do business remotely greatly increased in the spring of 2020," said Russ Wilkie, executive vice president and chief experience officer for the credit union.
The white-labeled Q2 platform works with Hoosier Hills' existing core technology to allow members with consumer, business and commercial accounts to review account details in one centralized portal, while also offering access to the Q2 Catalyst suite of commercial business products that include automations for processing larger payrolls — which weren't previously available at the credit union and are now available for those more complex accounts.
Additional features offered through the partnership include remote deposit capture for checks, peer-to-peer payments through an integration with Zelle and Q2 Smart, a marketing tool that analyzes consumer transaction data to help tailor advertisements according to purchase history and other factors.
Prior to the update, the credit union added 100 to 135 new commercial accounts each year with overall balances amounting to a peak of $29 million. In 2020, Hoosier Hills added 420 new accounts and saw balances rise to more than $37 million overall.
This growth, Wilkie explained, was primarily driven by the added payroll services that helped the credit union both attract new businesses and meet the needs of existing commercial members who kept their funds with other institutions that had more encompassing products.
"We've always had a robust commercial lending operation, especially with agriculture, being that we're in the rural markets of southern Indiana with a lot of farmers as members," Wilkie said. "But we found ourselves hedging on larger businesses when it came to treasury management and the lack of capabilities for handling those with large payrolls and transaction volumes."
Hoosier Hills isn't alone, as many other executives prioritized customer experience overhauls across 2023.
But those still using legacy systems often struggle with adopting modern tools. The outdated and siloed nature of legacy core systems can make integration with newer software costly.
Dallas Wells, senior vice president and head of product at Q2, said many credit unions have rudimentary platforms reminiscent of "what online banking was in 2004 or 2005," in the days of batch data reporting.
"Digital banking is now much more than just being able to see a transaction history," Wells said. "You actually need to be able to make transfers, initiate wires, initiate ACH transactions, add new users. All that kind of stuff that you would expect to be able to do in person, [customers] largely want to be able to do that digitally," Wells said.
Part of the integration process involves first working with a client's core provider to ensure transaction data and other information can be transferred between the two systems, then moving outward to build integrations into Q2's platform with other third parties that clients work with. For larger digital banking software providers that pre-build such integrations, credit unions can benefit from the quicker timeframe for deployment.
"That ecosystem is now more connected than ever, and more real time than ever," Wells said.
Better digital banking capabilities will allow credit unions to serve small businesses that can't get loans or deposit accounts at large banks.
"Larger organizations want to go after the larger loans. … But when it comes to those small business entities, be it a mom and pop operation or single member limited liability company, a lot of them are overlooked by the larger organizations," said Amanda Swanson, senior director in the delivery channels practice at Cornerstone Advisors. "That's a huge [potential] growth factor for those credit unions."
