Resources / Interviews · Growing credit unions
Interviews · Growing credit unions

Conversations with rapidly growing credit unions.

Not a case-study library. These are the recorded, unedited conversations where credit union executives say out loud what they changed, what it cost them, and what the call report looked like afterward.

Every figure below is quoted from the conversation or article it sits on — no rounded-up numbers, no composite averages. Baselines and timeframes are stated on each card.

527%Credit Union 1 — Monthly new members, 62 → 389
59%Capitol Credit Union — Growth in new memberships
82%CPM Federal — Fewer manual fraud reviews
3 minMemberSource — Application time, down from 15

Figures as stated by the executives in the linked conversations. Baselines and timeframes are described on each card.

Section one · 5 conversations

Growth, with the receipts

Five conversations where a named executive puts a number on the record — membership, deposits, application time, or fraud workload.

Membership growth · Credit Union 1
527%62 → 389 new members a month (Dec 2023 baseline vs. the following January)

A $1.75B credit union went from 62 new members a month to 389

Todd Gunderson walks through what changed at Credit Union 1 after account and loan opening moved onto Cotribute — and what it did to deposits. Over the first six months of 2024 the credit union averaged roughly 472 new members a month, a pace of about 5,664 a year, which he puts at a 4.6% organic growth rate against a 121,000-member base. He also gets specific about where the operational relief showed up for staff.

Todd GundersonChief Executive Officer, Credit Union 1$1.75B · Illinois · with Philip Paul, CEO, CotributeVideo — CU Broadcast #3868, April 2025
Watch the interview →
Membership growth · Capitol Credit Union
59%Growth in new memberships — 60–70% of it arriving through online channels

How a $225M credit union grew memberships 59% in Austin’s crowded market

Pierre Cardenas describes moving Capitol Credit Union off branch-dependent growth and onto an online-first channel — in one of the most competitive metros in the country. Account opening went from 45–50 minutes to a matter of minutes, and between 60% and 70% of the new membership growth now comes through digital.

Pierre CardenasPresident & Chief Executive Officer, Capitol Credit Union$225M · Austin, Texas · with Philip Paul, CEO, CotributeVideo — CU Broadcast #4068, October 2025
Watch the interview →
Lending · MemberSource Credit Union
3 minLoan application, start to submit — down from 10–15 minutes

What a COO does when the lending platform underneath him gets deprecated

Cody Jones is candid about the LoanLiner sunset and what it forced MemberSource to solve: a cumbersome flow, a bad mobile experience, and the abandonment that came with both. Applications now take 3–5 minutes instead of 10–15, online applications are up 24% year over year, and the whole migration landed inside six months. He also talks about where he will and won’t let AI near the process.

Cody JonesChief Operating Officer, MemberSource Credit UnionHouston, Texas · with Philip Paul, CEO, CotributeVideo — CU Broadcast #4192, August 2026
Watch the interview →
Growth + fraud · CPM Federal Credit Union
32%More new accounts opened in 90 days, alongside an 82% drop in manual reviews

More accounts opened, fewer people checking them by hand

Kathy Richardson makes the case that growth and fraud control are the same project, not competing ones. In the first 90 days CPM Federal opened 32% more new accounts while automated detection and decisioning cut manual reviews by 82% — giving staff back the hours they had been spending on remediation and cleanup. The conversation also covers what Gen Z now assumes an account opening should feel like.

Kathy RichardsonVP, Digital Products & Services, CPM Federal Credit Union$680M · North Charleston, SC · with Philip Paul, CEO, CotributePodcast — CU 2.0, Episode 382, December 2025
Listen to the episode →
Trade coverage · CPM Federal Credit Union
66k+Members served, with the fraud review burden cut by 82%

The write-up: how CPM Federal grew accounts while cutting its fraud workload

Roy Urrico’s reported account of the same programme, with the numbers laid out side by side and Richardson quoted on what the team stopped doing. Useful if you want something to forward to a CFO or a board packet rather than a 30-minute video.

Roy UrricoReporter, FinopotamusFeaturing Kathy Richardson, VP Digital Products & Services, CPM Federal Credit UnionArticle — Finopotamus, January 2026
Read the article →
Section two · 2 conversations

Inside the build

Less about the result, more about the decision and the implementation — including the parts that were harder than expected.

Implementation · Credit Union 1

“Here’s what we ran into.” A CEO on the implementation itself

Recorded six months before the results episode, this is Todd Gunderson on the unglamorous middle: choosing digital onboarding, standing it up at a $1.75 billion Illinois credit union, and the problems that surfaced along the way. He is notably unguarded — both about his own implementation and about where he thinks the industry is stuck. Worth pairing with the CU Broadcast episode above to see the before and after.

Todd GundersonChief Executive Officer, Credit Union 1$1.75B · Illinois · with Philip Paul, CEO, CotributePodcast — CU 2.0, Episode 322, October 2024
Listen to the episode →
Fraud · CPM Federal Credit Union

Choosing a fraud vendor without wrecking the member experience

Filmed in the Studio Lounge at the Corelation Hybrid Client Conference. Anita London and Tommy Hawkins talk through how CPM Federal actually ran its vendor selection — weighing fraud reduction against friction for real members — and what made the working relationship function once the contract was signed: transparency, and a fast turnaround when something needed fixing.

Anita LondonVP, IT Applications, CPM Federal Credit UnionWith Tommy Hawkins, Director of Growth, CotributeVideo — CU Broadcast at Corelation 2025, May 2025
Watch the interview →
Section three · 2 conversations

Leaders on what makes a credit union grow

No product in these two. Just executives on strategy, focus, and the people who build the digital side.

Strategy · Nutmeg State Financial Credit Union
70%Of the product set, cut — the credit union then doubled in three years

The three things growing credit unions are good at

Pat Ahern on the counterintuitive move that worked coming out of 2008: “We eliminated 70% and we focused our economic power on the products… most meaningful.” Nutmeg State doubled in size inside three years — during a contraction. His argument is that growth comes from net worth, a clear identity, and picking a niche instead of trying to serve everyone, and that core-system limits are why agile third parties matter.

Pat AhernPresident & Chief Operating Officer, Nutmeg State Financial Credit UnionConnecticut · Interviewed for the Cotribute leaders seriesInterview — Learning from the Leaders, May 2023
Read the interview →
Leadership · Rize Credit Union

From proof operator to running digital member experience

Chris Kuchar’s path through a $1.1 billion credit union — 70,000 members, eight branches, 185 employees, ten of them in tech-facing roles — and what she looks for now when she hires: service instinct alongside technical skill. She is direct about the bias that remains. “There is still room for improvement and acceptance for women in technology.” Includes what launching a new online account opening platform did for approvals.

Chris KucharVice President, Digital Member Experience, Rize Credit Union$1.1B · Profiled by W.B. King, FinopotamusProfile — Finopotamus, Women in Technology, July 2024
Read the profile →
Your turn

If your last four quarters look like these, we’d like to record it.

We’re booking the next round of conversations with credit unions growing membership, deposits or loans without buying the growth. No script, no approval cycle on what you’re allowed to say. If that sounds like your shop, tell us what you’ve been working on.

Put your story on the record   Talk to Cotribute The work you do is meaningful.™