I fancy myself something of a minor expert on Medicare and often have advised friends who are approaching 65 about their best options. Until a man I know approached me and asked for my advice. He added he was dually qualified for Medicare and Medicaid, and he thought he probably qualified for food benefits, too.
Huh? I had no idea what he was talking about and had to admit to him I was useless in this case.
Today I advised him to find a credit union he could join that also is a customer of Starlight, a fintech with a focus on unlocking some $100 billion in government benefits that are available to credit union members.
What do Medicaid and SNAP (aka food stamps) have to do with credit union successes? Maybe a lot.
As I think about Starlight, I increasingly see it as an embodiment of a creative reimagination of how a credit union can dramatically differentiate itself from banks by helping some of the neediest members live better. Credit unions, remember, were birthed in America to serve people that banks had no interest in serving. When a Catholic monsignor helped some French-speaking mill workers form St Mary’s Bank (the nation's first credit union) in New Hampshire, he was not steering them away from local banks. The banks didn’t want them.
Not much has changed today, especially for people who rely on government benefits for food, for medical care, for helping pay utility bills, childcare, and many more programs for the needy.
The government benefits are there. They are available to qualifying people. And Starlight says it has the knowhow to unlock an average of $1000 per year per member who qualifies.
Starlight was on a podcast I host a year ago. It’s was on again recently because it came with big news: it’s now a CUSO and has won funding from One Washington Financial, a CUSO that is wholly owned by Washington State Employees Credit Union.
Scott Daukas, a principal at One Washington Financial joined the show to talk about the CUSO and, specifically, why it funded Starlight. He also briefly talked about Silvur, a portfolio company that also has been on the show and that specializes in helping credit union members apply for Medicare and plan for retirement.
Starlight works a related vein. CEO Shreenath Regunathan said that the core Starlight focus is helping automate the often bewildering process of applying for government benefits—a process made all the more bewildering by massive changes that several big programs (such as SNAP) are undergoing as the year ends.
Government forms are never easy to fill out. A helping hand, especially from a credit union, would be very welcome and Starlight is that hand.
This explains why One Washington Financial opened its checkbook for Starlight. Of course, Daukas liked what he saw regarding the business’ fundamentals, but what closed the deal is that what Starlight is doing is integral to what Daukas sees as the credit union mission of helping members, especially those members who most need a helping hand.
Starlight now is deployed at over a dozen credit unions, and it is busy signing up more, because frankly, the need is there. Those credit unions, in addition to seeing Starlight get benefits for needy members, also directly benefit themselves via a 32% increase in member engagement and 2X more retention of members who get benefits via Starlight, according to Starlight’s data.
That’s a win-win, for credit unions and members, and in that victory another fact about credit unions that differentiate them from banks is clear: a happy credit union tells other credit unions about the third-party services that are working for them. Both Starlight and One Washington Financial agree on that point. When a credit union genuinely likes a vendor’s wares, that credit union will loudly sing the praises of the vendor, urging more credit unions to sign up.
That process accelerates when it’s a CUSO that’s involved. Starlight’s Regunathan said that just maybe the ideal situation for a fintech is to have customers who also are investor/owners of the fintech. The credit union itself has skin in the game, and it will loudly sing the praises of a CUSO that delivers for them.
Regunathan says a lot of credit unions now are knocking on Starlight’s door. And that just may be very good for the credit union movement as it fights to get its differences understood.
