BOSTON–Over the last decade as credit unions have invested heavily in financial education, elsewhere in the world escape rooms and gaming have exploded in popularity, especially among younger people. Now one credit union—which believes classroom learning just doesn’t work for most people––has married all three in what may be the most unique CU branch experience in the world.

After opening its prototype “Quest Room” branch in Burlington, Mass. earlier this year, Hanscom FCU has opened a second such “experience center” branch in downtown Boston that features what is essentially a series of four escape rooms in which participants must answer clues about financial issues—in this case, fraud—before moving on to the next room. 

The newest Quest Room has more of a “Disney-ized” user experience, according to HFCU.

Getting Members on a ‘WealthTrek’

It’s all part of a broader initiative at the $1.8-billion Hanscom FCU called “WealthTrek” that is a dedicated effort to building financial wellness among members. Its CEO, Peter Rice, said the return on the investment it has made on everything from having employees trained as certified financial counselors to the redesigned branches with Quest Rooms can be seen in the data, including an enormous leap in checking account penetration. 

The new 2,300-square-foot branch in Government Center (Hanscom FCU previously served federal employees and others in downtown Boston through four facilities it has now consolidated to one) features the “Meow or Never: Cats, Puzzles, and Personal Finance” interactive Quest Room that is a single space divided into four distinct sections, each representing a different phase of the experience. As participants (up to four) progress, they move through each room, uncovering new challenges, solving puzzles and gaining insights about fraud. An individual or group cannot move to the next room until they have solved the clues in the room they are in. (Assistance is available for those who may get stuck.)

The CU Daily Keeps a Secret

The CU Daily, which participated in the Quest Rooms, has agreed not to give away too much information from inside the four rooms in order to maintain the mystery and not reveal any clues. The new facility opened on June 22.

The Quest Rooms, according to Rice, are all about having a truly innovative culture—not just buying software.

“Your culture has to be able to do innovation and fail small and win big, and for credit unions, that’s a big risk,” Rice said. “In working with boards and CFOs, people always talk about ‘Is anyone else doing this? If not, we’re not going to do it.’ That’s the curse of the financial industry. The worst thing that could happen here is, if this fails we just convert these back to regular offices. That’s it.”

Growing Branch Costs

Rice noted the most recent traditional branch Hansom FCU had built, it Dorchester, Mass., had cost $2.6 million. The new branch in downtown Boston with the Quest Room cost $1.3 million.

“Since that time construction costs have gone up 30%, so this whole concept is built on improving,” he explained. “This is a forever process; this will never be finished. We’re always going to be tweaking it, adding to it. subtracting from it, and improving the experience. Experiences need to change as times change and our members’ needs change.”

The first branch to feature a Quest Room, in Burlington, Mass., had just a single room and a focus on auto lending that is primarily an analog experience.

“We had tremendous success with it. We tested it with hundreds of people. Big groups. Small groups. Eighty-six year-olds. Six-year olds. Two-star generals,” he said. “What we’re really pleased with is it doesn’t matter your background. It appeals to everyone. People learn through play and when they learn through play it tends to stick; you’re not lecturing. It gets through the shame and stigma and you’ve created a space where it’s actually safe for a member to fail.”

Looking at Its Own Experience

In strategizing the focus for its Boston branch, Rice said the credit union looked to its own interactions with members and settled on fraud because it has become such an epidemic and has affected so many people—or will. Avoiding fraud can also be a key component of improving financial wellness, he said, noting several times how Hansom FCU has at the same time sought to make the experience “fun.” 

“If you’ve had a great life and you’re 80 years old and you (are defrauded), it takes away 80 years of confidence,” Rice observed. “The dollar amount, of course, is important but it robs people of self-esteem, So, we wanted to create an experience that would actually bring people through that and give them the confidence to deal with fraud if they actually encounter it.”

Fraudsters, many of whom are now using AI, have gotten better and better, Rice pointed out. “So, we’ve got to raise our game, and this was our answer to that big societal challenge. We’re interested in tackling societal challenges.”

A Big Departure

The Quest Room branches are a big departure from how every other credit union in the world has approached financial education, and has involved investments in software, branch design, training, time and more.

So, where did the concept come from?

Rice said he played a role in the development but also credited a “combination” of people for the Quest Room concept and for bringing it to fruition. Rice has a history of deploying technology in new ways. When he was previously with Workers Credit Union in Massachusetts, it introduced robots and holograms to interact with members. 

“I look at the outside world and I see how that’s changing,” Rice said. “I’ve been in the banking industry for 20 years and I’ve become what I would describe as annoyed that our spaces don’t reflect our ideology. I’m a big believer that geography shapes cultures, so if we’re looking to really change members’ lives but we’re not changing the spaces that we engage in, you’re not going to get lasting change or sustainable change. That begins with taking a look at tradition and throwing the bad parts away and keeping the parts that really work. For people today you can see future isn’t transactions. We want to get away from idea that we are just about transactions.”

The Quest Room branches do have a transaction counter for members, and numerous members stopped into the branch on the day the CU Daily was on hand.

As an example of how physical spaces have had to evolve and change their games, Rice cited museums, which have moved from staid glass cases enclosing dusty exhibits to interactive and three-dimensional experiences. 

Getting Board Buy-In

The Quest Rooms, the investment and the fact it all requires square footage for offices credit unions would typically use for member meetings and “sales,” would seem to make board buy-in a challenge, but Rice said that has not been the case.

“We have got an amazing board. One of the great things about our military heritage is the military plans for events that never happen all the time, so when working with that board I said that’s what we’re doing here,” Rice explained.

Hanscom FCU was chartered to serve Hanscom Air Force Base.

About the ROI

The second tough audience would seem to be CFOs wanting to see the ROI. Rice said he can provide it.

“The approach is different but the results are solid,” Rice told the CU Daily. “This now engages people in financial wellness. They realize what we’re about and then they sit down with their (financial) coaches. When you examine a coaching data over 18 months you’re going to see that the engagement levels of those members have been coached versus members who have not been coached, and it’s stunning.”

Rice added that the level of data it can produce demonstrating the ROI it is seeing also makes a strong case for examiners.

The Exit Interview

Rice explained that when a member exits the Quest Room they are met by a financial coach who asks about the experience and what they might have learned. The member is also asked if they want to learn more about financial wellness.

According to Rice, the newest Quest Room reflects lessons learned from the trial-and-error process of its Burlington office. That office, which he emphasized “we’re very proud of,” is just a single room and the clue-solving process is more analog, with Rice observing that making changes requires a screwdriver and manual effort. 

The new Quest Room, he said, is on a “Disney level” and uses proprietary software in its primarily digital interactive experience. The Burlington office has also offered some insights into “how humans play,” where participants get stuck, where clues can be made more difficult and easier, and how the overall process can be challenging without injuring the users’ self-esteem.

Rice said Hansom FCU mostly built out the Quest Room experiences in-house, but it did talk to gamers and experts in gaming UX.

‘Wait a Minute’

“Anyone’s who’s raised kids in the last 20 years will say, ‘I don’t know why they spend so much time on these games, I don’t know what they’re learning from them,’ and while some of that may be true you have to step back and say, ‘Wait a minute, why are they so successful?’ It should be, ‘What is happening in our society and how can we leverage that?’, instead of just bemoaning it,” Rice said. “People learn through games. When I look at kids learning through games I see them doing complex actions to win and using complex strategy. I see my own kids playing their computer games with their friends and they are have a better understanding of strategy at 12 than I do at 49. 

“Why are we turning away from this? We’ve invested heavily in developers. We’re now working on the digital part of this. We just announced our partnership with Alkami to build (out an app).”

The freestanding app has the potential to be the “great equalizer,” according to Rice, who said every financial institution offers services such as Zelle and standard transactions, but Hanscom offers a “WealthTrek” to members.

Rice said the future will also offer an interactive experience on devices such as Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality headsets. 

How to Get Members to Invest the Time

In a digital marketplace where consumers want fast, convenient transactions and prefer not to visit physical branches, how does Hanscom FCU get a member/non-member to invest the approximately 40 minutes it requires to complete the Quest Room challenge? 

Rice said to date HFCU has found there are many people who want to have the experience and willingly invest the time. 

But to spread the word and market its financial wellness offerings and the new Quest Rooms, Rice added:

• It has more than 1,800 SEGs at which it has been reaching out to people in HR
• It has a relationship with a professor at Regis College who specializes in occupational therapy who has been using the Quest Rooms with both students and clients to teach team dynamics and more
• It has also been reaching out to other groups, such as the New England Center for Veterans, which is just across the street from the Boston office. Rice noted veterans are often targeted by fraud. 
• It has also been partnering with Four Block, a nonprofit that assists veterans as they transition to civilian life.
• It has been working with middle and high schools

Making it ‘Fun’

Especially with the latter, Rice said it’s all about making the learning “fun” instead of “going to class.”

“We know as a society people that don’t learn in classrooms anymore,” Rice said. “We know this and yet we make that same mistake time and time again. Now we have a facility (where people) enjoy this challenge. I know it’s true because we’ve tested it…They’ve enjoyed it and they come out and they’re talking about it. In Burlington we’ve had families coming in saying they’re trying to teach their kids responsibility and get then to understand that they can’t have the BMW or Mercedes. It enables parents and families and school kids to have safe conversations.”

Expansion Underway

Rice said the Burlington Quest Room is in the process of being expanded from one room to three and the subject matter will expand from auto lending to other subjects, such as retirement, and will also include a kitchen for “baking the perfect credit score.”

Another lesson from the Burlington office, Rice said, is that it actually needs more space to accommodate all those who want to use it, and it is redesigning the facility to be more of an “open-air auditorium.”

Rice said Hanscom FCU plans to change out the themes in the Quest Rooms as often as it needs to. The greater use of digital media such as video screens used in solving the various challenges makes that even faster, he pointed out. 

Changing out the various “quests,” Rice explained, leads to members saying, “Hey, have you checked out that new challenge down at WealthTrek?”

Changing Behavior

Rice said WealthTrek has been developed as a sub-brand of Hansom Federal Credit Union as part of its dedication to financial wellness. 

“You have to change behaviors,” he said. “If we say ‘Come down to Hanscom Federal Credit Union,’ the two concepts are unrelated. People do not associate banks and credit unions with this kind of action. So, what you name the place dictates its action. You don’t go to the gym to do a transaction, you go to the gym to work out. If we say, ‘Come down to the credit union and try (financial education),’ they’re going to think classroom instruction and they’re not going to be interested, because if you’re in a classroom you’re going to be shamed. It’s unintentional, but you’re going to experience a level of shame and if it’s fraud, you’re not going to want to talk about it. It impacts your mental health, not just your financial health. We’ve created something that actually generates some positivity.”

Rice said that as part of the financial coaching culture at Hanscom FCU it sits down with members and takes them through the process of creating financial wellness and helping members achieve their goals.

What the Data Show

“We’ve been tracking it for 18 months to 24 months now, so we have about 3,500 members in the coaching process,” he said. “Strategically, as a credit union, and now I’m speaking as the CEO to the CFO, we have about a 16% checking account penetration with our membership because we’ve always been savings account-focused. Our competitors are all 40% to 50% checking account penetration. But those 3,500 members who have gone through the coaching process have an 85% checking account penetration. So, my pushback to CFOs, et cetera, will be, ‘You tell me a promotion that will get you that kind of checking account penetration.’ There are no gimmicks.”

Given all the messages hitting consumers every day, do members understand what the Quest Rooms are, or is there confusion?
“Some are confused, but once you show them the concept there is no member who doesn’t say, ‘I’ve got a grandkid, I’ve got a daughter, I’ve  got a school, I’m going to tell my local church group’,” responded Rice. “They get enthusiastic about it.”

Organizations can reserve the spaces.

Taking a Chance

Rice encourages other credit unions to take a similar, non-traditional approach, even if he’s not confident many will.

“Our industry will doubt it, but our members don’t, and that’s the fascinating thing here,” he said. “That’s my message: if you want to be innovative you have to be willing to fail small but not fail big.”