CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 393 DeepTarget's Preetha Pulusani on Puttinhg CU Member Data to Work

Fact: credit unions have lots of data about their members. Everything from home address to their liquidity.  

Fact: credit unions, most of them, are woefully inept at mining this data to better serve those members and also to boost member retention and up cashflow into the credit union.

Enter DeepTarget, a Huntsville AL based fintech that serves 285 clients, 85% of which are credit unions and they range in size from around $25 million in assets to several billion dollars in assets.

All come to DeepTarget for its toolkit of proven tools that get results. In 2025 for instance DeepTarget tools helped its customers open 328,000 new accounts, generated $1.98 billion in new loans, and brought in $2.7 billion in new deposits.

The DeepTarget secret is how it effectively mines the data a credit union already has on hand.

That sound you hear is the CU cash register ringing.

Monthly DeepTarget fees are affordable, too, typically four figures a month.

And usually a credit union’s own staff involvement in DeepTarget campaigns is minimal, although accommodations are available for credit unions that want a more hands-on role.

In an era of generative AI all this may seem unglamorous and maybe it is.  But it delivers meaningful bottomline results to credit unions.

On the show is Preetha Pulusani, the company founder and CEO.

And if you wonder how all this tech happens in Huntsville, I have one name for you Wernher von Braun.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell, look it up.

Listen up

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hi, and welcome to the CU 2.0 podcast with big new ideas about credit unions and conversations about innovative technology with credit union and fintech leaders. This podcast is brought to you by Quillo, the real-time loan syndication network for credit unions, and by your host, longtime credit union and financial technology journalist Robert McGarvey. And now the CU 2.0 podcast with Robert McGarvey.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Fact, credit unions have lots of data about their members. Everything from home addresses to their liquidity. Fact, credit unions, most of them are woefully inept at mining this data to better serve its members, and also to boost member retention and up cash flow into the credit union. Enter Deep Target, a Huntsville, Alabama-based fintech that serves 285 clients, 85% of which are credit unions. They range in size from around$25 million in assets to several billion dollars in assets. All come to Deep Target for its toolkit of proven techniques that get results. Monthly Deep Target fees are affordable too, typically four figures a month. And usually a credit union's own staff involvement in Deep Target campaigns is minimal. Accommodations are available for credit unions that want a more hands-on role, but if your staff is busy enough with other tech projects, Deep Target doesn't need a lot of input. In an era of generative AI, all this may seem unglamorous. Maybe it is. But delivers meaningful bottom line results to credit unions. And cash is glamorous. Deep Target generates cash for its credit unions. On the show is Preda Polisani, company's founder and CEO. And if you wonder how all this tech happens in Huntsville, I have one name for you. Werner Von Braun. The name doesn't ring a bell. Look it up. Listen up. Now you have, according to this grid you sent me this morning, 285 active client contracts.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

And roughly 85% of those are credit unions.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

And they vary in size from 25 million or so in assets to several billion in assets. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

What's the average tenure of a client of yours?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

I don't know how much.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

How much churn there is of clients. So they come on, I got this one little project, I want to do more auto loans. Okay, fine. Hey, this was great, worked fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Oh no, it doesn't work that way. So I would say the churn is less than 5%. And churn happens primarily when the institution is going through some kind of platform change, some tech platform change. Yeah, primarily, we don't really work directly with the core. We work directly with the digital banking platform. And so that's uh so so say some they're shifting from I just pick one, right? Jack Henry Banner to some Pfizer platform that we don't yet support. They either suspend or they they cancel. We are our contracts today, our standard contract term is five years, Robert.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Wow.

unknown 4:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're almost you're almost as bad as PfIServe. I mean, I mean, I think FISER is a very good thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Remember, we're making them revenue and we're helping them grow.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Well, that that's different.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

So churn is not something that just happens after a campaign is done. You know, sometimes a prospect comes to us and says, hey, our policy is no longer than three years, or our policy is to be coterminous with our digital banking platform. And we are flexible. We're a small company, we are flexible.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

How many employees do you have?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

I have 10 W-2 employees, and then I have about as many 1099 contractors, and most of the contractors are fractional.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

You do a lot of work for that level of staffing.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah, I've been around for a while, remember, and I I think the development-wise, uh, you know, the tech platform is so solid because the first few years that's uh that was our entire focus. I'm a techie, so maybe that's why. So my entire focus was, you know, build a very strong, unbreakable platform so that we don't have to worry about it later. And now it's all about, you know, how do we it it's it's a lot about spreading awareness that we do exist, that you need us. We can help you grow, we can help you acquire new customers and retain them. Because, you know, we'll help you move these customers from having one product to becoming the primary financial institution for them. So let us help you engage them in the branch that they visit most often.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Well, as you know, one of the neat things about credit unions, as opposed to banks for the most part, is a credit union customer will tell other credit unions, we're working with da-da-da, and they're great. Or we're working with da-da-da and they suck. It's they will talk, talk that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

They talk. That helped that helps us a lot, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

No, I've heard from so happy to be references if they're happy.

unknown 6:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, I remember asking one guy why he'd signed up for a certain service, and he said, You know who a mutual friend of ours who works at a very big credit union. I was calling me every week asking me why I hadn't signed up yet. I said, He said, Yeah, she's an evangelist for it.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, so I love that about credit unions because they're they're less about competing and a lot about sharing, you know, good, good and bad. And we have a lot of uh credit union clients. So when we are talking to a new credit union who we have done an outreach to, and they maybe say they're a 600 million asset size. So we we really try to give them a reference that's around the same size so they can understand what they do and how they how they've been using the target and what the benefits have been.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Now, when a credit union initiates a conversation with you now this year, what are they what itch do they want you to scratch for them?

SPEAKER_01 7:33

One of the primary things that they that they want to do is they say they they're just not meeting their members in person anymore in the branches, and they want to figure out a way to engage them. And so that becomes and and and be able to tell them about new products, be able to tell them about what's going on in the credit union, the whole community aspect. So that's a big deal for them.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

That's I hate to say this, and you may disagree with me, but it I think it's a it's certainly not a majority of credit unions that have the awareness that they don't have insight into their members because members aren't going into branches. I mean, I I see these things on LinkedIn. You know, president of a credit union will say, Oh, I stopped in the branch and three customers came up and hugged me. It's like, hey, dude, I don't care about the three customers. You know, three members. I, you know, come on, there's a bigger picture here. Most you know, people don't go into branches. So my point is a lot of credit unions, I think, are still in a state of delusion about how much they know about their members.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Robert, I will not disagree with you. I I tend to agree. That's why I say we we spend a lot of time spreading awareness about what we do and how we can help them. Listen, there are what about 5,000 credit unions in the United States. And we have, you know, you saw the number of contracts we have, right? If if more credit unions were aware of what of what is happening and how they needed to kind of transform what they do, I think we would have a lot more customer contracts. So when I I believe that the ones that we do have are the are the progressive ones.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

It's it's the ones that have the courage to say, to look in the mirror and say, ha, things today aren't the way they were five years ago with our members. And that takes a certain amount of courage to say that. Now, as as we've discussed previously, there is this generational shift in the C-suite. Baby boomers, people my age are retiring, and younger people are coming in. Those younger people are A, more tech savvy, and B, I think they're more willing to look at the question of how do we reach out to members if they don't come into the branch.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

I I believe you're right. I mean, they come in very digitally aware. And you know, most of them are, you know, all of them are either customers of Amazon or Netflix. They know what personalization means, right? They know what engagement on uh in in virtually, a virtual engagement means with with consumers. So I I agree with you. I think they come in ready to change things and to shake up things. It's not always easy, but I believe that's what happens. And and this culture shift has to happen at the top.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Yes. With Amazon, I've I've bought a lot of Kindle books, thousands literally, over the years. Amazon recommends books to me. Most of them aren't crazy. Are they? No, most of them are actually pretty good. There's something I might have been interested in reading. And how do you but they have all that data from thousands of book purchases? So, what data do you have that lets you make a recommendation to me, the member, as opposed to all members?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So I may not have your personally personal identifying information, but what I do have is I have things like your generation, your age, how long you have been a member, what accounts you have opened with this credit union, whether you own a house, whether you have a debit card, have you signed up for e-statements? Things that do matter, right? So there's enough data there. We we get this through the financial institution, uploaded daily, and it's coming from the core. So that's good enough data to do a lot of good personalization and targeting with relevant messages and cross-selling of products that that individual has a high propensity for. And then we we also have predictive model campaigns. We we we have developed these models over time based on results that have been achieved by our own software. And so those are proprietary models, but what they help us also say is who in this credit union is the highest propensity for platinum credit card, for example, right? And then you start running that campaign just just for those members. So those so that the members are not deluged with messages that they don't really care about or products that they don't really care about.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Which is a problem, most credit unions, at least credit unions that I have relationships with tend to send me offers. I would never have any interest in this.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Because that's because most of them are doing the the old way of spray and pray. You know, let's just delusion, just let's just send out all of this direct mail, for example, and with within this three-mile radius of this branch, everybody gets the same thing. And yeah, because everybody gets it, maybe some people will listen. Or member might go to a credit union website and and they find all a whole range of products that's different from our from the credit union actually presenting an offer that makes sense, that is also personalized, and that has information that matters to that individual.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Now, what's your typical fee?

SPEAKER_01 13:48

So we are our fees are asset-based. So based on the size of the the credit union, we have a one-time setup fee, and the annual, and and that's usually say about 15 to 20 percent of the annual fee. The annual fee, it's a monthly subscription, but it's an annual fee, right? The this is just how all the SaaS models have changed how how the payment happens. And for let's call it, let's say 300 million credit union. I'm just I don't have exact numbers, but I I would say they're paying us about$2,000 a month. And with that, they're getting our expertise. We are actually uh they're co-pilots, we help them run those campaigns. We we provide managed services.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

And you can be up and running in as little as 24 hours, but typically more like a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

And exactly what kinds of campaigns are you running for for credit unions now?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

So it's all the loan and deposit products for retail use as well as commercial use, if if that institution happens to have a commercial customer base as well. But let's let's talk about the consumer products. It's all of the loan products, it's credit cards, it's checking accounts, savings accounts. So because I may be an indirect member at your credit union with an auto loan, and it's important for the credit union to see if they can get them to open more accounts there, maybe a savings account, maybe an IRA account, whatever it is, it's just bit by bit getting them to be more sticky with your credit union. And to do that, uh, you know, you have to first engage them and tell them why it makes sense for them to say open a checking account at your institution. You have them as a member already just because they have an auto loan, right? Or a mortgage. Why not do more with them? So, yeah, so it's all of those, it's all of the deposit. I think there are about 17 or 18 different products that we can run campaigns on.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Now, are you involved in many credit unions dream about getting more business banking customers members? Do you have tools to aid in that?

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yes. So we started out primarily in engaging and cross-selling to existing account holders. So if you had commercial accounts already, we would present products to your commercial accounts. But what you're talking about is actually acquiring new accounts, both retail and commercial.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Which may be with existing credit union members who happen to own a car dealership or a stationary shop. No, I'm probably not a stationary shop anymore. But it's but yes, they're they have a small business.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So uh so we do have we do have targeted campaigns where we would promote the credit unions, the credit union would promote their commercial offerings to an audience that they think might be interested. So that certainly is there. But we we just introduced a targeted acquisition program. So instead of the spray and pray mentality where you go and just within a particular radius, you go find everybody. Because our decision engine already knows who a profitable member is, we are able to take that profile and then identify within a geographic radius the similar type of profitable prospects for membership, and we are able to then target them for to get new core deposits, whether they retail or commercial.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

How what percentage at ballpark of credit union members are profitable?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

I wish I had that number. That what a great question, Robert, but that stumps me. I don't know what the average number is, but I know I can get it. And I I know I can get it for each credit union, but I don't know generally what what that is.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

What I just remember going back like 12 or 15 years ago, there was a big campaign for credit union new members, you know, ditch your bank, join a credit union. It was actually pretty successful. And and then I went back to credit union CEOs and said, you know, like a year later, how's that working out? It's about bad. That's really bad. Because the people would open a share draft account, a checking account, put like 50 bucks in it, and then go dormant.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah, that that that's a really good question. And and I I hope the leaders of CU of credit unions are looking at that, you know, at least on a monthly basis, to see what percentage are profitable. But I, you know, you've given me some homework to go do. I'm going to go just kind of look at uh a few of our customers to see what percentage of them are profitable and how most credit unions still offer free checking.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Whereas Chase wants, if you don't have a minimum balance of a few a few thousand or five thousand bucks or whatever it is, Chase wants, I think, 10 or 12 bucks a month. And they still don't want you as a customer, actually, if that's all you have. Whereas a credit union says, Hey, you got 50 bucks, five bucks, actually. You can well, you're sure, sure. Come on down, you can be a member. And then that thing is costing them money every month.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah. And but but conversely, I just saw my my sales, my CRO just forwarded me a message from. Chase that he had received that said that Chase would pay him$900 to open a checking and savings account. Of course, they have to have some minimum balance and they have to have some level of transaction.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

But but Oh no, as I tell people, when I moved to Phoenix 12 years ago, I had an auto loan with Chase. That was my only relationship with Chase. And that was a no-interest auto loan through uh for a Subaru car. Yeah, Chase was basically just managing getting a fee from Subaru for managing the thing. But I moved to Phoenix, and lo and behold, I got a letter from Chase saying, hey, you know, there's a branch like really close to where you live. And, you know, you've open an account, you can open it online, then go up to the branch, show them this letter, and we'll put 300 bucks there, or maybe it's 500 bucks in in your account. Done. I don't even think there was a minimum. And so I said, okay, after that. It was that easy. You just went up to the branch, showed them the letter, boom, money shows up.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? So that that's how much so so so think about this, right? They're spending all of this money to acquire customers. Now, what are they doing to retain them? And I do believe that's the most important piece of the work that we do. We are trying, we're not only are we cross-selling to them, we're engaging them every day, we're giving them valuable information where they actually the members actually look for them. We do something as simple as wishing them on their birthday and maybe giving them a special offer, right? And you would be surprised how long, uh what a long way that goes. We have one uh credit union customer where the CEO and the staff have actually videotaped themselves. It's not highly professional or anything, but it's authentic, singing happy birthday. And so on the member's birthday, they send out this off this uh banner that wishes them for happy birthday, and they click on it and this video plays, right? It's within digital banking. It matters to members to know that their financial institution really does know them. Such a simple thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Your point is that the credit union has this data, it's there. They just don't know how to mine that data and use it, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yeah, it's it's always been a black box. And then you put, you know, marketing people traditionally have really been about brand awareness, less about data. Of course, that's changing, right? Today you cannot be in marketing and not be tech savvy. But then they don't own the data, right? They have to go somewhere to get it, to access it. That's why I said leadership plays such an important role in making things like this happen. We used to talk a lot to marketing people about our product. That has changed in recent years. We talked to the chief digital officer, the member experience person, we talked to the CIO, the CTO, who's who really interested in how do how do we leverage this data that we have for the good of the credit union for growth. So that's been actually a very good change because all of a sudden the the CTO or the CIO doesn't need permission to access the data. They have the data. They they own the data in that in that organization. And so it's easy for uh for them to deploy what we do.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yeah, I think you know the problem credit units have isn't member loss exactly, member attrition, is members who become inactive and just stay on the books. And since you're not paying a fee, why go through the exercise of closing the account?

SPEAKER_01 23:57

And it just stays there forever.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Yes. And what you can do is re-energize or reactivate some of these accounts.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

And how do you do that exactly?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

We have just announced the release of a recommendations subsystem within our within our suite. But the way we do that, when we've done that traditionally, is we get an automate automated upload of data. So when we set up the system, we identify the fields that we need. The credit union provides that as an automated update. The most often it's it's a daily update. So we get a refresh every day. Generally, they have 25 to 30 campaigns running. So think about all the products that they have, plus general messages that they want to get back, get out to the user base. These could be rules-based products, they could be predictive model products, they could be leads that somebody has sent them, that is a list that they provide. It could be any mix and match of different types of targeting modes. And every day our decision engine takes all of the members, takes these campaigns, uses the data to define for each member what offers are valid for that member. So we define an offer stack for each member. And as they log into digital banking, whether it's mobile or online or, and whenever they log in, the next best offer shows up on their screen in a very visually immersive, impressive way, right? We could have multimedia, it has personalization, it says preta, you have you know 250,000 of equity. Would you be interested in a HELOC, for example? So that's how we do it. And it works because on the back end, we track not just, you know, how many impressions did this ad get, how many clicks did this get? Clicks, by the way, are leads. We actually track what accounts were opened influenced by these campaigns and how much revenue was generated, and what were the actual balances that were generated. So we can actually tell them here are your new loan balances generated as a result of your campaign over the last three months, six months, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

I think the the great thing about what you're selling is that in most credit unions, the credit union will make money using these tools or letting you use the tools on their behalf. Whereas if I take a deep dive, if I'm a credit union CEO and I take a deep dive into AI today, I'm not gonna make any money this year from it. I know that. Will I make money next year? I'll probably praying that I do, but I don't know that either. Whereas you'll you'll start generating, you'll be, I'll make money paying you money, if you will. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

That it it makes a lot of that's what we we tell them. I mean, don't just take our word for it. Look at the data, the performance analytics that we provide, which are beyond just vanity metrics, to actually coming down to who clicked, who bought, okay, and when they bought, what was what was the actual revenue generated, and what was the balance. If they opened a CD, for example, here's the balance of that CD. So it's it's it's deep, hence our name. So we go a lot deeper than than most engines do. AI, AI is a tool, it's not the end-all solution. It's how are you deploying that AI? So we have several ways we're deploying that AI, but AI is a tool, it's a found, it's like a building block. It's not the end you know, solution. So I think we're using AI effectively on behalf of this of the credit unions.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

And how how do you deploy AI?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

We have a couple of areas where you we're using it effectively. One is, of course, the predictive model campaign. So five years ago, I'm thinking five, six years ago is when we first put in these predictive model campaigns. Before that, the credit union would come in and say, let's do some, let's create some rules, of course, with our help. Let's create some rules based on the data that we have on who we target, right? So, for example, if somebody had was close to retirement, we would have some special deals for for that demographic, we would set up a rule, and that would be the campaign. But today, for that same for that same demographic, we say open a retire for a retirement account, what is the highest propensity audience for this? And our system automatically generates that audience, and then you just create the campaign and run it. So that's one way we're using AI. The other way is the it's not enough to just have data that tells you what you need to do. You have to help them actually deliver the message. So we deliver the message and how the message looks and feels, that's where we use generative AI. We have some we have a feature called AdBuzz where we can actually generate the images and the messages that could go on these banner ads.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Now you sent me some data this morning. There's one tab that says new loans generated 1.98 billion. Over what time frame?

SPEAKER_01 30:03

That was a that was the entire year 2025 from all of our customer contracts.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

So just one year though?

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

That's pretty cool. New deposits generated 2.7 billion.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

And what do we have? New accounts opened$328,000 in change. Leeds generated almost a million, 931,000. That's that's some terrific results. You know, it's not glamorous, it's not anthropic or open AI. But it's tangible dollars and cents stuff that doesn't cost too much. And as you've told me before, the credit union does not necessarily need to provide a lot of STEM support for this.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Correct. We found that to be a real barrier, actually, to marketing folks. There are there are, first of all, very few marketing folks in credit unions, and they're already overwhelmed doing you know, all of the traditional marketing that they've done with branding and to throw another app that they need to learn is not always ideal. So we said, let's just do it for them because it's you know, we made the platform very easy to use, but despite that, we said, let's just wait for them. Let's just do the work for them. And that's that's actually worked out really, really well because it's gone from, oh, I'm too busy to even look at this, to oh, please just become an extension of our marketing team and run this for us.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

I absolutely I've talked with a fair number of young fintech CEOs, and what they hear often at credit unions say, that sounds great. That sounds great. We just don't have the bandwidth to do this right now. Why don't you get back to us next year? Now, for young fintech, why don't you just tell them to commit suicide? Because they don't have any cash flow.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

Next year may never come for them.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

I'm sympathetic with that CEO or whoever in the credit union who says, Man, I'm over. I'm I got 20 people working on this damn open AI thing, and I don't know what I'm getting from it. I don't have any extra bodies to throw at this. So yeah. But you're saying you don't need a you don't need a body. We can do it all for you if you want. Or if you want to participate, I imagine there's a way they can participate too.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, so we have some, right? We want we want to create the ads. So we of course, I mean, we'll just take the ads you create. Let us help you set it all up and get them out. Sometimes they just set it and forget it, but we kind of ping them every quarter and say, I you know, it's time to refresh your ads. Let's do a refresh. So that that helps them as well, right? So, and then you see these results. Sometimes, you know, sometimes things really surprise me, Robert. You look at these numbers, and these are real numbers, right? I'm not making up how many deposits, what the dollar value of the deposits are. I'm just taking that data and presenting it back to them that this is what uh the yield was. And every now and then we get somebody who is not familiar with Deep Target. Oh, we're evaluating all of our contracts, we don't see an ROI. Uh, I got one the other day. It was somebody who was, it was from a bank, I will say that. And and and the person said, you know, we don't see an ROI. And that person was responsible for retail at the bank. And I went to check her. We have something called a management report. So I went to check her management report. She had generated, they had not run any loan campaigns during the year, but they had run deposit campaigns. They had generated 11 million, 11 million throughout the year in new deposits. And they were probably paying me 3,000 a month. Are you saying it was not worth that? So, so of course, this is a conversation we have to have. Just it's it's it's a lack of awareness of what it this system is doing in some cases. Maybe that person was new at the FI and had this thing to go cut costs, who knows? No. You know, I mean that was a good conversation to have with them.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Oh, yeah. No, sometimes they don't know that there is a benefit here, it's just not quite what you're asking about. Now, are there any surprising campaigns that you've been running recently? I mean, there's something new trending at credit unions that I'm not aware of. I mean, home loans, mortgages are kind of still dead. HELOCs are pretty much dead, though there's a little more life in a HELOC.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah, so one of the things that we're finding is many of our credit unions are trying to attract the youth. And sometimes they may have to do that through the parents. You know, we have this new generation that's going to be inheriting a lot of wealth. So I think credit unions are trying to prepare for that, but don't quite know how to do it. But I have seen some good campaigns that are all about, you know, youth savings accounts, incentives to open youth savings accounts. And and usually these go through the parents to to the younger to attract those younger members. But uh, I have seen some of those that are that have been interesting. And I you can see why. It's because there's so much that's going to be happening in the next few years as people retire and as people die, and new, new, new blood comes into the system.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Also, people tell me that many places, including in some instances, school cafeterias, only take debit cards. So suddenly your suddenly your 14-year-old needs a debit card. Right. And obviously, you want to put some breaks on that. You don't want you don't want to find the kids drained your account overnight playing someone.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Well, but you can put limits on that. I think what's important, the number of transactions is very important for the credit union and for their profits.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Right. So, but that's you know, I know a lot of credit unions are are seriously looking at happening, you know, how can we serve this youth market responsibly, responsibly for the institution, also for the kid, and definitely for the parents. So it's uh what what are you hoping to do like in the next three years?

SPEAKER_01 37:08

So my hope is um you know to grow. I think the awareness we've we've reached a point where we are getting a lot more. We we used to do a lot of outreach, but now we're getting a lot more people who come to us because they've heard about what we've done. So I think word is spreading in the industry. I think it's very important work that we're doing to enable these credit unions to grow and retain their members. So I if so for me it's it's all about you know increasing the value that we provide to the credit unions, and because of that, you know, growing our own user base. We have so many references, Robert. So that's that's really the good. I mean, even if you go to our website, you can see some of the testimonials that we have. So I do believe it's going to be a good couple of years coming up.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

Well, you have roughly 10% of credit unions if we exclude the T Tiny ones from the count. That's that's that's a lot of credit unions. Uh, and a question I've asked you before, I'll ask you today, why haven't you been bought? Because I know there are big companies out there buying smaller fintechs. They sort of eat them for breakfast and what at lunch they wonder why.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

But yeah. I I think so so I've grown this company organically. So I've bootstrapped and I've grown this company organically. I haven't been out there pitching the company for sale. I have had a lot of people interested in it, and I've talked to them, I've had conversations and said, yeah, let's just wait a few, a couple of years. I I just don't believe my work is done, and it's maybe a very selfish point of view, but I think it's getting very close. So you you never know. You may you hear something in the next, I would say about the three-year time frame.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

No, I was since you're a profitable business, which is sort of unusual in the fintech world.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

I wasn't always right. I've had to scrape my way into profitability. So yeah, I know what what it means to manage cash and cash flow and and all of that good stuff. So so I'm in I feel like I'm in a good place now, and there's still a few things we want to do. Have a great team. And so I I can see that this there's I can see the end kind of coming for me.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

How many uh uh women CEOs of fintechs are you aware of?

SPEAKER_01 40:03

So I attend a a a great industry organization. I I attend their summits and I'm part of that organization. Have been for about seven or eight years, the Association for Financial Technology. And I have seen actually over just uh from the beginning to now more women attending. They may not all be CEOs, but they are C-suite. We even have a women in technology, you know, kind of uh get together at that thing. So, but I would still say it's sub 20%, and 20% maybe high.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

Yeah, I there's definitely been a growth of women in the C-suite. No question about that.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

I know maybe about three or four I can think of offhand.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

CEO suite, there are fewer women. But you know, obviously the growth of other jobs in the C-suite says that the there will be growth in the CEO suite.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

There will be. Yes, yes, and it's great to see. It's great to see.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Oh, I I've always thought so. I mean, if you're trying to put on put put together a team of winners, but you exclude half your players, I don't I you're not gonna do as well as you would do otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

No, we're not gonna count those people. Well, that's kind of stupid. But it's uh do you have any trouble recruiting people to work in uh Huntsville?

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Not at all. I mean, it's a tech hub. It's you'd be surprised how much of a tech hub it is.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

No, it's it's rocket rocket USA. I know that. Yeah, it's rocket. Before there was a NASA, there was uh rocket stuff in in Huntsville. Werner Von Braun worked there, if my memory's right. Yes after World War II.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Launch the Saturn V. And if you come to Huntsville today, the we have the largest space and rocket museum. It's it's fabulous. And you have a model of the Saturn V standing up, but you have the actual Saturn V lying on its side. It is an impressive rocket, I can tell you. It's huge. And yes, so so no, I have not had trouble. I have recruited from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. My developers and also from surrounding universities, University of North Alabama. I've recruited, they've come in as interns and then ended up being our customer services or developers. So, no, I have not had trouble recruiting. And and um, I used to work for a company that was founded in Huntsville and became very successful called Integraph, not in the fintech space. And my executive management team are essentially people who worked for me there. So I'm well placed there.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

Well, I would imagine the cost of living in Huntsville is significantly less than the cost of living in Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Significantly.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

It may be the highest in Alabama, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

But now it is just because the growth is crazy. Because I mean, we've been growing just at a tremendous pace. Government, military, space command moving there, the FBI located there, there's what they call their um kind of second headquarters. We have a huge military base, yeah. Cool. So there's just a lot going on, and so it's become the largest city in Alabama now.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah, I that blows my mind. I I would have put all kinds of money down on Birmingham, but I would lose. Before we go, think hard about how you can help support this podcast so we can do more interviews with more thoughtful leaders in the credit union world. What we're trying to figure out here in these podcasts is what's next for credit unions. What can they do to really, really, really make a difference in the financial scene? Can't all be mega banks, can it? It's my hope it won't all be megabanks. It'll always be a place for credit unions. That's what we're discussing here. So figure out how you can help. Get in touch with me. This is RJ McGarvey at gmail.com, Robert McGarvey again. That's RJ McGarvey at gmail.com. Get in touch, we'll figure out a way that you can help. We need your support, we want your support, we thank you for your support. The CU two dot oh podcast.