Heritage Family Credit Union was formed in 1956 when a group of GE employees in Ludlow, Vermont, pooled $800 in deposits for the first month. Over seven decades later, HFCU strives to provide friendly, high-quality services for its customers and their families throughout Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts.
Katye Munger is the Assistant Vice President of eCommerce at Heritage Family Credit Union. We recently talked with her about her experience working with Lumin Digital and how their new system has improved the CU’s experience.
Challenges
Before engaging Lumin, Heritage encountered several obstacles to its digital banking journey. For example, Katye mentioned that their previous online banking platform did not allow them to target users in any meaningful way, could not register people for different e-services, lacked continuous enhancements and deployment, and had no consistent method to advertise new features or control who had access to certain features. Capabilities were hidden, and they had to wait for people to ask for them; users didn’t know what was available.
A New Platform
The new Lumin Digital platform transformed user engagement. Katye explains, “We can target users based on the type of account they have. It’s really key. Right from the get-go, we can target only business users, perhaps businesses that don’t have a credit card with us, people who don’t have mortgages with us, or have mortgages at other locations. We can then market home equity loans to these users. Having that knowledge and marketing flexibility is really great. We have had an increase in online services since the pandemic. The in-person branch is now open, but it really revealed what people can do online. We are still seeing an increase in electronic applications, which our users can access through the Lumin platform.”
Katye continues, “If you download the app, you can do absolutely everything. Users haven’t had that experience elsewhere or with us until now. Now there is a really robust and complete platform in your pocket everywhere you go—it’s really just convenient.”
Improved Marketing Capabilities
Now, everyone who logs in can see features that are relevant to them. “It’s a really targeted way to make sure users receive valuable information,” Katye says. “We have seen an astronomical increase in remote deposits and bill pay just from advertisements and explanations about how the system works. Targeting users expands the knowledge base of our products.”
The platform also allows HFCU to compete with larger financial institutions. “The features and flexibility of the platform allow us enhanced functionality. We can control the features of the platform based on our users’ services. Having that relationship component and building upon it is key. It was a really smart way to design the product and reach our users in a meaningful way.”
It’s a true omnichannel experience. The same experience no matter where you’re logging into the platform. Pay your bills whether on your phone or desktop web browser… doing transfers, seeing account balances, or ordering checks. All of those things are really huge.
Katye Munger, Assistant Vice President of eCommerce
Why Lumin Digital?
Katye said about Lumin Digital, “The big impact on our decision was continuous deployment. Lumin has weekly deployment and is able to fix any sort of bug or issue, enhance features, roll out new features, and increase the functionality with no downtime. Most companies do that just once or twice a year. No downtime and continuous deployment—that makes a huge difference.
I’m coming up on my two-year anniversary with the company. They were pretty confident they were going to choose Lumin but wanted someone to look at it with fresh eyes. I did due diligence on several companies. The biggest thing that stood out for me was that Lumin talked as one person. We were truly working together on this new venture, and they’ve come through on all of their promises. We were the first credit union to market with Lumin Digital …. we are proud to be the first credit union on Lumin.
With Lumin Digital, it’s more of a partnership experience than I’ve experienced with any other company. They really want to know how we’re doing, what our feedback is, and how we can make it better for our users. It’s a really wonderful thing.”
