RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif.– CO-OP Financial Services has partnered with OpenIDEO on a “credit union engagement initiative” that is being supported by MasterCard.
The initiative started with a workshop to unveil an “online collaborative community merging innovation, purpose and the future of financial services,” the company said.
Attendees at CUNA’s GAC were given early access to the new initiative through a CO-OP-MasterCard-hosted one-hour workshop that was led by OpenIDEO, a global community working together to design solutions for the world’s biggest challenges.
“This CO-OP program powered by MasterCard is dedicated to co-creating the future of human-centered financial services,” said Samantha Paxson, chief marketing officer, CO-OP. “The onlinenetwork will provide the process and tools to engage in human-centered design, and serve as a collaborative catalyst for innovation.”
According to CO-OP, in June the entire credit union community will have access to the online platform, which will extend beyond the industry to include millennial non-members who are already part of the OpenIDEO community. In addition, the engagement initiative will facilitate the hosting of local collaboration-focused events and include the design and release of new tools to help credit union employees lead the journey to innovative financial services, the company said.
“MasterCard has partnered with CO-OP for many years to help inspire innovation and find creative solutions for the challenges confronting credit unions today,” said John Ainsworth, EVP, MasterCard Worldwide. “We are very excited to join CO-OP in this effort to establish a platform with OpenIDEO that delivers the tools and resources to help credit unions drive their business forward.”
During the workshop at GAC, OpenIDEO and the initiative’s first group of “Credit Union Innovation Fellows” helped attendees explore human-centered design approaches through a hands-on session. Attendees learned tools and skills to help them creatively tackle challenges they face at work, in addition to constituting the lab’s first connected community of credit union change-makers.
The development of this initiative is a result of months of research to identify how to best create a solution enabling credit unions to connect with each other and share ideas via an online platform.
“Our credit unions identified a need for tangible, clear resources to help them innovate as well as a need to bring them together as one community,” said Paxson. “This new endeavor will address these needs by focusing on community building and peer-to-peer learning as pathways to innovation.”