BankJoy hosts online summit to address credit unions’ response to COVID-19 crisis
DETROIT, MICH (April 3, 2020) — Online and mobile banking provider Bankjoy hosted its COVID-19 Online Summit last week (March 26, 2020) to address credit unions’ response to the health and economic crisis sparked by the global coronavirus pandemic. More than two dozen credit union executives attended and participated in the hour-long discussion, exchanging ideas, offering advice, and much more.
Some of the key topics discussed included:
- Helping members face job loss or income loss
- Digital offerings
- Working from home/remote workforce
- Communications
- Long-term effects on branches
- Hoarding money
One of the participants, Lone Star Credit Union CEO Becky Reed, talked about her successful remote workforce migration due to the credit union’s already established VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) platform. Reed said that VDI does not require as much bandwidth as other virtual platforms, it’s more secure, and can be rapidly deployed.
As for the discussion surrounding member job and income loss, many of the credit unions echoed each other in allowing multiple skip-a-pays – with either lowered or waived fees, breaking CDs, exploring mortgage forgiveness, loan payment extensions, increasing remote deposit capture limits. Many participants also agreed that being proactive and helping members now even if they aren’t impacted until later to stay ahead of trouble.
During the digital offering discussion, skip-a-pay was the stand-out performer for credit unions. In addition, massively increased digital usage volume was experienced across the board due to branch closings. Other ideas included having a global alert feature, editing or cancelling multiple bill payments at once, automating the account opening process so staff can spend more time helping members.
As for addressing those cash hoarding horror stories, participants considered cash withdrawal limits to curb stockpiling. Also, delivering consistent communications to members on fraud prevention measures such as phishing scams was emphasized.
As for Bankjoy, they are offering skip-a-pay in all its digital banking channels, as well as mobile banking, online banking, and conversational AI (Joy).
According to Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan, the tech firm is helping clients communicate branch closures and COVID-19 communications through its digital banking channels, as well. Bankjoy clients who have Joy can enable a COVID-19 message be played; Joy will also answer questions about branch closures and services offered. Duncan and his team are also offering all clients the ability to make automated outbound calls via Joy about branch closures and services at no additional cost.
“Our COVID-19 Online Summit was a very transparent event for credit union executives to freely exchange ideas and help each other,” states Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan. “We’re all looking for more information to stay in front of this crisis and when you can get it from a peer that’s always a good thing. Our goal was to host an open forum and allow the information to flow without barriers – ultimately helping credit unions better serve their members in critical times. I think we accomplished our goal and then some.”
Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan
About Bankjoy
Detroit-based FinTech, Bankjoy, delivers modern banking technology, including mobile banking, online banking, and a banking API to banks and credit unions — big and small. The company prides itself on creating beautiful products with advanced features, simple navigation, modern look and feel, and world class user experiences shaped by talking with clients. Bankjoy is backed by Curql Collective, Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and CheckAlt. For more information, visit www.bankjoy.com.
