LAS VEGAS–In a marketplace where every product and service provider, including credit unions, is racing to embrace AI, will it have the inverse effect of creating an opportunity to appeal to consumers with “authentic” human experiences?
One person believes so. It was just one of the observations made during a panel discussion around the “unknown mystery” of what changes technology, especially AI, is causing in the world and in the marketplace.
Another prediction: AI will change the credit union organizational chart.
All of that discussion came during a session at Mitchell Stankovic’s Underground Collision meeting in Las Vegas, held in conjunction with the Money 20/20 show.
The Panelists
Participating in the discussion, which was moderated by Stephen Bohanon, founder and chief strategy officer with Alkami, were:
• Amber Harsin, vice president, credit unions, Mambu
• George Estrada, chief technology and innovation officer with Rize CU
• Hillary Foster, principal, credit unions, AWS
• Raj Bandaru, CIO, Kinecta FCU
• Rajesh Patil, co-founder and CEO, Digital Align
Here is some of what was discussed:
Bohanon: What are some things you see coming down the pike to be prepared for?
Harsin: Agentic AI and how that might work with augmented reality, stablecoins, and then even further down the road, to at least be curious about things like quantum computing and how that is going to affect us operationally from a positive perspective, and also the risks, too—meaning our encryption today is not going to be sustainable.
So, how are we thinking about the strategy of post-quantum computing and protecting digital identities.
Bandaru: Some things we need to think about with quantum computing is it isn’t that far out. Once it becomes mainstream, you can crack all your encryption codes in less than five minutes.
What is the underlying technology with stablecoins? It’s blockchain. You can crack even blockchain with quantum computing. So, where do you put your trust?
Estrada: A couple of things I’ll push back on just for the sake of pushing back. Quantum computing has a lot of challenges. You need almost zero temperatures for these machines to work. Yes, they can do encryption/unencryption, but there are a lot of challenges.
With AI, what you’re seeing is a lot of mathematics. It’s not thinking or reasoning; it’s math.
What I think is around the corner is that with all this going on, the underlying technology—the blockchain—is getting better. In the future I see a convergence of the public blockchain technology and demand for more privacy. Who do I want to trust?
Foster: There is a crisis in the credit union movement, and it’s called demographics. What the future generation is looking for is mobile-first, mobile-only, flexible experiences and meaning. That’s where the credit union movement has an extraordinary story to tell.
There is already some impact of the AI revolution in the hiring of young people. We know many young people are not finding employment. There is going to be a generation of people who don’t make the same financial services decisions that people used to.
What we advise is thinking backward on the member needs and creating a flexible AI strategy. What I also think about with the demographic issue is the needs of the employees of credit unions. We hear “human in the loop,” but I really prefer “human at the mast.” The superpower in having that tool makes my work so much faster and more effective.
We have the opportunity now to pick what superpowers we want, and all of that is based upon our data strategy.
Patil: AI agents. You will have a personal agent, a data agent. A skilled agent. This is not just an agent that can talk to your members and you. They can do the work for you.
I think the org chart is going to change into a work chart where everybody in an organization is not defined by who they report to, but by what work they do. These skilled agents can probably do 60% to 70% of the work your staff is doing now. This is an opportunity for you to have your existing staff meet with members and go into communities. It’s about staff not tied to their desks and clicking buttons.
Bohanon: I think in our industry we are going to see such a massive shift to AI agents. We are going to have such a shift to all AI-created content and communication that there is actually going to be an opportunity to be the contrarian, where authenticity rises as a premium. When everything becomes so robotic, it’s “Why can’t I just deal with an actual person?”
Think about a world where we become so numb to AI-created experiences that the authentic experience becomes so valuable to us.
