BOULDER CITY, Nev.–Mitchell Stankovic and Associates said it will be announcing a new initiative to “unshackle” credit unions from legacy technology on Oct. 26 as part of its UNDERGROUND event in Las Vegas.
The company said in making its announcement that most industry executives know there is a “fundamental problem when core systems are 50 years old, antiquated and even if they have migrated to the cloud, their underbelly is still obsolete technology.”
The new initiative is the result of ongoing work that has been going on by the “UNDERGROUND Credit Union Shared Services,” also known as “CUSS,” working group. Mitchell Stankovic said it has brought together technology experts and credit union industry leaders to “define a native language, cloud-based core and sandbox of additional solutions.”
What Solutions Will Do
The company said the solutions will:
- Effectively serve small, boutique, de novo and large CUs
- Be scalable
- Have a reasonable initial and ongoing cost
- Be accompanied by strategic advisory services “designed to help credit unions embrace the new offerings and benefit deeply from converting.”
The ‘Vision’
“Without the resources and talent to tackle the issue, the industry does research, talks about how it won’t work and then initiatives stall. Why? It’s complicated,” said Susan Mitchell, CEO of Mitchell Stankovic and Associates. “Besides limited resources, there are long- term contracts that are difficult to unwind. Our vision is to ensure the unique people helping people philosophy is sustainable, not vulnerable to bad guys, so credit unions can safely serve consumers with the tools they need to do it. We formalized an UNDERGROUND working group to design a modernized core, a sandbox of tech add-ons, plus support services to help credit unions make this critical change. A credit union in a box.”
Why 1 Company is Supporting Effort
Among those supporting the Credit Union Shared Services is Mambu, a SaaS cloud banking platform.
“Mambu supports financial institutions worldwide, including the credit union space in Canada,” said CEO Fernando Zandona. “Earlier this year, I attended the Underground event in Washington, D.C., where I met with many executives who lead U.S. credit unions. It was clear to me that Mambu’s values align with the industry’s mission and focus on its members and community. We, therefore, enthusiastically offered to join and support the Credit Union Shared Services working group as it takes the credit union industry forward.”
A ‘Key Window’
According to Mitchell, 2024 presents a “key window of opportunity: for credit unions to overcome this core challenge, as major corporations are partnering with Mitchell Stankovic to bring global expertise and system architecture to the credit union sector.
“There are many skeptics and folks that say they will retire before ever doing a core conversion and then there are others who emphatically declare that it’s been tried before and hasn’t worked,” said Mitchell. “I get it, but that was then and this is now. It is no longer acceptable to kick the can down the road. Too much is at stake.”
Additional Information
Additional information on the UNDERGROUND meeting—which is being held in conjunction with the Money 20/20 conference--as well as registration information is available at this link.