In parts one and two of this series, I explored how credit unions can leverage AI to optimize sentiment and improve clarity in member communications. Today, I'll address another critical challenge: effectively serving members who speak languages other than English.
The growing imperative for multilingual service
Today, 67.8 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, and over 25 million have limited English proficiency (LEP), meaning they struggle to read, speak, write or understand English. With 76% of consumers preferring to buy from businesses that serve them in their preferred language (and 40% saying they won’t buy from those that don’t), accommodating first-language preferences can be a powerful differentiator for credit unions.
Many credit unions recognize this and now offer multilingual websites and in-branch interpretation services. Yet servicing communications—letters, notices, and statements—are still commonly sent exclusively in English. For members, these communications are crucial to understanding their financial situation and making informed decisions. By not translating them, credit unions are increasing the chance of miscommunications, leading to negative outcomes and ultimately undermining the community-focused service they aspire to deliver.
Why translating member communications is challenging
The reason credit unions don't translate all communications comes down to how resource-intensive the process is today. Whether outsourced to third-party providers or managed internally using disconnected tools like email and Word documents, the process is painstakingly slow and costly. Human translators work through full documents one at a time at an average pace of 300 words per hour. When the same letters, notices and disclosures are needed for different products or regions, common content like regulatory disclosures and product descriptions gets translated repeatedly. This is both highly inefficient and introduces the risk of inconsistencies between communications. As a result, many credit unions translate only a small percentage of their servicing communications, often limiting themselves to what's legally required.
How AI is transforming translation
This is where AI offers transformative potential. AI can dramatically accelerate the translation process, reduce reliance on expensive service providers and improve overall translation consistency and accuracy. While there are many sophisticated AI tools available for translating content, such as DeepL and ChatGPT, credit unions need to carefully consider their approach to using them.
The complex, sensitive nature of servicing communications means that AI tools need the right context and guidance. The instructions, or prompts, provided to AI systems need to be carefully crafted to produce accurate output consistently. Simply prompting the AI tool to translate content into another language can produce generic results that require considerable rework. For example, a term like "share draft account" might have an established translation that differs from a direct word-for-word translation. Additionally, certain elements of member communications should not be translated, yet need to be maintained such as variable data like member names, account numbers, and addresses.
These challenges mean that simply copying content into ChatGPT or another standalone tool won't deliver the consistency, accuracy, or efficiency credit unions need. Without proper supporting structures and expertise, AI-based translation will fall short of its potential.
Choosing the right solution for AI translation
Credit unions should seek solutions purpose-built for managing and translating complex, highly regulated content. Look for platforms that provide pre-built prompts for translation, eliminating the burden of prompt engineering from your teams. Also critical is the ability to incorporate custom glossaries into the translation process and systems that automatically recognize variables or entities that need to be preserved.
A particularly effective approach is leveraging AI translation directly within the systems used to manage communications, such as a customer communications management (CCM) platform. When translation tools are disconnected from these platforms, teams face the time-consuming challenge of manually implementing translated content back into their templates—which is far from a simple copy-and-paste job. Any speed and efficiency gains are quickly eroded by having to manually implement content changes across multiple templates and languages. Working within a CCM platform also enables credit unions to maintain control over the translation workflow, ensuring AI-translated content receives human approval before reaching members. It also provides visibility into team AI usage and creates an audit trail for compliance and reporting purposes.
Maintaining accuracy and control
One objection many teams will hear when proposing AI translation is concern about accuracy. We recommend all credit unions begin by using AI-powered translation and AI-powered translation accuracy checks in conjunction with human-in-the-loop validation. AI can assess content through entity verification, missing content checks and semantic accuracy analysis. These AI accuracy checks have even found errors in human-translated texts that were approved and in production. While the error rate is small, overall accuracy can be improved using these tools.
This creates a best-of-both-worlds scenario: Credit unions harness the speed and intelligence of AI while maintaining human oversight and control. Research has demonstrated that this hybrid approach can yield comparable translation quality in less time for as little as 5% of the cost of human translation alone.
By serving members in their preferred languages, credit unions can deliver on their commitment to financial inclusion and member service. The increasing power of AI means translation is no longer a prohibitively expensive undertaking—with the right tools and approach, credit unions of all sizes can ensure every member, regardless of language, confidently navigates their finances.
