Photo courtesy of courtesy of AEFCU
Brian Kennedy
Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer, American Eagle Financial Credit Union
Industry experience: 33 years
Age: 56
American Eagle Financial Credit Union is entering a new digital era. The credit union has recently redesigned its website, the final step of a strategic plan looking to boost its digital offerings.
While the financial industry is moving to a more digital landscape, American Eagle remains focused on being involved in the community, says Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer Brian Kennedy. The credit union hosted a financial reality fair where high school students go through a simulation to improve their financial literacy and skills.
With new digital tools, the credit union’s leaders think they’re ready to serve the next generation members who have high expectations when it comes to what they can do without stepping foot in a branch.
Q: What prompted the credit union to redesign its website?
A: We’ve grown and changed significantly since the days of Pratt & Whitney. We’ve recently begun our journey to handle and be more of a partner to the population within the counties we serve. We are oriented more towards the residents and the consumers, not necessarily the workplace environment. The redesign, it is part of a larger process. I think it all started with the pandemic. During the pandemic, the industry noticed a sharp increase in digital use, specifically with online account opening. Many organizations within our industry saw 20 percent lift and account acquisition through online channels. We knew we had to invest in our digital platforms at that time. At that point, we had our leader in the digital solutions, Pam Villanova, who’s our senior vice president that handles that work. She created a roadmap that centered mainly around the functionality of our platform, online and mobile banking, as well as digital account opening and our payments channel. The last phase of it was our website redesign: our storefront. We were looking to combine the technologies to produce a more contemporary platform to solve the needs of our 165,000 members.
Q: The ideal of the credit union mission is very community-oriented. As the financial landscape becomes more digital, how do those technologies still allow for that local feel while still being able to grow membership and expand outwards?
A: I think that’s one of the benefits of this latest redesign. We were able to institute some of those roots that we have within the community, and show some of the good work that we’ve been doing, exposing some of the partnerships, and really highlight some of that work. There is a balance. I think larger companies like Google and Amazon start to shape what consumers demand from an experience perspective, but we’re finding that there is a lot of value for individuals to associate with their locality and we feel that’s a value we bring. With the mergers you’re seeing in the market and some of the transition, local community institutions are not necessarily a dime a dozen like they once were. That we find that to be a strength and that we certainly want to accentuate.
Q: Do you feel that customers have an expectation that there’ll be digital tools that work well or for local institutions is it still an added benefit of being able to keep up to date technologies that consumers are able to use?
A: I think we’ve done some research in this area, and what we’re finding are consumers certainly are changing their expectation when it comes to self service. In particular with banking, it’s an expectation that there are certain services that that folks can tend to on their own and by virtue it’s also changing the nature of the work that’s done within our branch infrastructure as well. The transactional pieces of the business, I think folks generally prefer her to handle that on their own at their convenience 24/7, and institutions are following suit.
Q: When you go from being really centralized in Hartford, expanding outwards, just how do you keep that community feel, going throughout branches?
A: We have the luxury of serving one of the larger employers in Connecticut for a good piece of our history. I think that gave us a certain degree of scale. We have that familiarity. We have a significant level of awareness in our markets to begin with. Being a household name within the community is just an extension of what we’re doing. We establish local partnerships in many of our branch areas. We have tremendous volunteer support within all those markets, and we look to continue that outreach as we look to grow and build further distribution. An example that partnership would be this financial reality fair concept, where we invite a lot of the local schools from the area. I think right now, we have over 600 participants slated to show up and what they will go through is a simulation exercise where they’re assigned a persona, and they will go through a real life simulation to look at financial management discipline as an adult. Basically, adulting one-on-one through the lens of banking and financial management. It’s highly attended and extremely well received. It’s in partnership with the local high schools. Faculty can’t express enough appreciation and frankly, our teams get very energized to see the level of eagerness and interest in this particular event.
Q: How do you approach the next generation of customers and meeting their needs and requirements when it comes to digital tools and expectations?
A: First, is recognizing the difference. I think these next generations that we’re going to serve are digitally native. They’re not as familiar with the traditional elements of banking, the brick and mortar, the branch infrastructure. There’s less of a need, less of a dependency and a greater expectation on the digital tools. We’re also finding that some of the disciplines in financial management, there’s a gap there as well because the traditional methodologies weren’t in place. There is that gap of learning. So we try to embed that in many of our tools that we’re instituting, such as personal financial management, showing where people are spending, how to save: some of those concepts. We try to introduce those in the platforms that they prefer: digitally. The digital native generations are not necessarily looking to attend a seminar in person, but perhaps there is a video module that they can pick up on and look at and we have some of that built into our website where they can live and learn and progress that way.
Q: What’s the credit union’s strategic plan heading into the future?
A: Our strategic plan is really moving away from the traditional value that credit unions provide. Obviously, we’re going to have great rates, low fees, that’s expected. That’s table stakes. I think what we’re trying to make a significant or seismic difference is providing financial freedom for individuals, families, and ultimately the community. To do that, we’re going to follow the same recipe. There’s an opportunity to do a little bit more hand holding when it comes to assisting individuals, assisting them. We have to meet the market where they are. That can be done digitally, or it can be done in person.
Kennedy’s Five Favorite Guitarists
- Eddie Van Halen
- Jeff Beck
- Eric Clapton
- Jimmy Page
- Mark Tremonti
