Banking A New Generation

The Opportunity

Educators Credit Union (ECU) was founded by teachers in 1937 and holds $2.2B in assets. For over a decade, they have been involved with a number of high school business programs. The goal of the relationship is to provide financial education as well as resources to the students and staff.

For convenience, they created on-campus “branches” that can take deposits from students or teachers and even help with opening new accounts. The branches are often worked by students involved in the business programs through their school and this helps provide them with real work experience through running transactions and even helping with some marketing promotions.

However, the account opening process was time-consuming, as it was all paper-based. To create the best member experience, ECU wanted to move its account opening process online.

The Challenge

Banking minors can be a tricky feat. Taking on this target market posed unique issues in several aspects. There are separate regulations and internal financial organization guidelines governing minors versus adults. Many have no credit history or ID to conduct identity verification and authentication. Acquiring sufficient test cases of minors from the third-party vendors to accurately approve or decline individuals proved an ordeal. As many financial institutions do not offer accounts to minors, this was not a common use case for many of them.

In addition, many high school students do not have extensive financial literacy. For many, this was their first bank account. They are also a mobile-first generation with high digital proficiency. This meant they had high standards for digital experiences.

The Solution

ECU needed a custom, digital application with automated decision engine rules that would accommodate the intricacies of opening accounts for minors. They decided to partner with Woodridge due to their expertise in creating custom applications and building on the Temenos Infinity platform.

Woodridge and ECU put a great deal of consideration into the UI/UX to build an outstanding application experience with in-application assistance to help the students be more knowledgeable and confident.

Together they designed an application ideal for completing on iPads right on campus. ECU trained student volunteers to assist the students and answer questions.

ECU is now able to immediately provide new members in the school setting with their account details and is thrilled with their improved onboarding process. The application will launch to coincide with the start of in-school classes and ECU expects great results!