3 Lessons GAC 2026 taught Credit Unions about AI | 3/5
Plus: Alltru CU cuts delinquencies $10M in 90 days, PFCU ends knowledge chaos, and more!
Over 6,000 Credit Union advocates just wrapped up at GAC 2026 in DC.
If you couldn’t make it, CU leaders came with receipts on where the industry is already heading with AI.
And let’s not forget the fun: Zest AI brought the La-LuLu plushies, and Glia was making AI-generated portrait sketches for those who showed up to their booth. Well played.
This week, I cover:
3 Lessons GAC 2026 taught Credit Unions about AI
Alltru Credit Union cuts delinquencies $10M in 90 days with texting AI
PFCU ends knowledge chaos in 5 months
Read time: 9 minutes
Top Stories
The biggest news this week…
1) 3 Lessons GAC 2026 taught Credit Unions about AI
AI was one of the defining topics at GAC in Washington, D.C., this week. Here’s what the industry made clear:
AI has moved from pilots to daily operations.
SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, the largest Credit Union in California with 1.5M members and $35B in assets, is no longer testing AI. CEO Bill Cheney told GAC attendees that deploying AI across all consumer lending products tripled the rate of automated approvals, freeing loan officers to focus on complex cases. BECU CEO Beverly Anderson framed it simply: “There are things you do every day. That’s ‘no-joy’ work. How do we let AI help so you get more opportunities to serve members?” New York Fed President John Williams gave the macro context, telling Credit Union leaders that AI will increase productivity and create new opportunities, and that the biggest gains will come from workers who integrate it into daily work now. (link) (link)
Governance is lagging dangerously behind deployment.
Devon Lyon, President and CEO of Central One Federal Credit Union, put the governance problem plainly at GAC. “An overall lack of federal clarity is creating essentially different levels of impact across the markets in which you’re operating,” he said. “There are certain states right next to one another, your members live in both, and now you have to create two different sets of frameworks to service both.” Michael Berman, founder and CEO of Ncontracts, added that overlapping state AI and privacy laws make it critical that Credit Unions stop siloing AI and privacy compliance. The NCUA has not yet issued official AI guidance, though it does have internal guidance for how its own employees use AI. When the session moderator asked for a show of hands, most attendees admitted using AI tools at work. Very few had a formal internal AI data governance plan. “Your organization is using AI, whether it’s a strategic business decision or unregulated,” Lyon warned. “And that could come up in audits.” (link)
Purpose-built AI is outperforming general tools by a wide margin.
Glia’s 2026 Banking AI Benchmarks Report, released during GAC and built on data from 400 financial institutions, found that banking-specific AI achieves 92%+ intent understanding, handles 94.8% of balance checks without human intervention, and automates 90-98% of post-call wrap-up work. The numbers show up in individual Credit Union deployments, too. After deploying Casap’s AI dispute platform, the $3.2B Chartway Credit Union cut dispute costs 85%, dropped resolution time from 90 days to 12, reduced write-offs 72%, and saved $875,000 annually. Disputes that once hurt NPS now generate member thank-you emails. (link) (link)
Williams told GAC attendees that Credit Unions’ local community ties remain a competitive superpower. AI does not erase that advantage. But institutions treating AI as a future agenda item are already falling behind peers who acted. (link)
2) Alltru Credit Union cuts delinquencies $10M in 90 days with texting AI
Collections staff at most Credit Unions are stuck leaving voicemails that never get returned while delinquent accounts pile up.
At Alltru Credit Union, a $360M, 40,000-member institution in St. Louis, that problem was getting worse. “Delinquencies have risen since the pandemic stimulus lows,” says Katie Bendyk, Director of eServices & Payment Solutions. “We knew the phone call isn’t as effective as it used to be.” Operating in a market where there’s a bank on nearly every corner, Alltru couldn’t compete on products alone. “We pretty much have the same services as everyone else,” Bendyk says. “Our service and culture is what makes us stand out.”
Alltru deployed Eltropy’s texting platform for collections and marketing, replacing outbound phone calls with instant, personalized texts that members could respond to on their own time. The results came from January to March 2024, when delinquencies dropped $10M in 90 days. “When I saw the numbers, I almost couldn’t believe it,” Bendyk said. “It was mind-blowing.”
Efficiency gains followed. With eight disconnected systems previously required to serve a single member, call center reps were burning time toggling between platforms. Eltropy consolidated communication into one place, letting reps serve more members per day. Alltru has since integrated Eltropy with MeridianLink to help the lending team close loans faster, with plans to expand across every department. Bendyk is also eyeing Eltropy’s capabilities to reach underbanked and unbanked members through CDFI expansion. (link)
3) PFCU ends knowledge chaos in 5 months
Finding a policy at PFCU used to feel like a treasure hunt.
“It’s almost embarrassing to say out loud,” admits Theresa Burgess, Chief Member Experience Officer. Information was buried across shared drives, nested folders, and email threads. Subject matter experts were drowning in chat questions on top of their actual jobs. New hires felt overwhelmed, member surveys showed hesitation in employee conversations, and turnover was bleeding institutional knowledge out the door.
PFCU deployed Posh Knowledge Assistant in August 2025, connecting all internal procedures, policies, and documentation behind a single Google-style search. Before rollout, Burgess partnered with department leaders to audit and centralize scattered materials, letting Posh surface duplicates and contradictions in documentation the team didn’t know existed. A beta program in select branches built excitement before the full launch.
By January 2026, PFCU logged 10,000+ questions answered across nearly 200 users at a 95% success rate. New hires asked fewer repetitive questions and ramped faster. Member interactions became more confident. Turnover stabilized, with departures shifting from burnout to retirement and relocation. PFCU exported a full year of employee questions from Pedia, uploaded the spreadsheet into Workshop Mode, and used it to identify knowledge gaps. (link)
Tips & Use Cases
Learn to apply AI…
StagePoint Federal Credit Union turns policy docs into instant answers: Geoff Shimp, VP of Technology, connected over 600 docs to CurrentWave AI via SharePoint, giving employees a searchable tool. Staff get procedure answers in under 15 seconds instead of manually combing through files mid-member interaction. When AI can’t answer, it flags the gap to management. (link)
Clearview FCU CIO sets hard ROI standard for AI tools: Raymond George measures every AI license by one metric: hours saved versus cost. Clearview runs ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, and Zest’s Lulu across HR, lending, and call center analysis, with trained AI champions driving adoption org-wide. (link)
GLCU’s AI voice bots drive $1M in community lending: Elizabeth Osborne reports that Interface AI bots “Olive” and “Oliver” handle all inbound calls and outbound outreach, driving a 5% NPS increase and 20% member awareness uplift. AI-guided outreach also helped lend $1M in underserved Philadelphia neighborhoods. (link)
Kemba CU CEO pledges no job cuts as AI handles routine work: Dan Sutton, CEO of Kemba Credit Union, rewrote an overly restrictive AI policy and now runs AI across contact center knowledge queries and outbound member calls for its 130,000 members. Sutton’s internal message: repetitive tasks shift to machines, no one loses their job, and any staff reduction happens through attrition only. (link)
OnPath FCU bets on AI to catch delinquencies before they start: Jared Freeman, CEO of OnPath Federal Credit Union, a $1.2B New Orleans Credit Union that grew 314% in five years, is beta testing Auvo’s delinquency prediction model to flag at-risk accounts early. Staff sends proactive outreach with payment resources before a payment is missed, replacing reactive collections notices after the fact. (link)
Generative AI adoption at banks tripled while Credit Union governance lags: Cornerstone Advisors reports bank generative AI adoption jumped from roughly 15% to 45-50% by function in 2025, but most institutions still lack autonomous decision policies, accountability structures, or ROI measures. Credit Union core replacements also dropped from 7% to 1% as AI investment crowds out legacy upgrades. (link)
BECU pilots AI financial advisor for paycheck-to-paycheck members: BECU is testing Becca, a purpose-built AI financial advisor, with 150 employee-members. The tool ingests budgets, credit scores, and open banking data to deliver personalized financial counseling to members who lack access to human advisors, with broad rollout targeted in 12-18 months and high-risk transactions kept under human control. (link)
AI is making Credit Union product differentiation obsolete: Allison Netzer of BrandThink argues that AI has eliminated product differentiation in financial services by making rate and feature comparisons instant. Her data from 75 banks and Credit Unions shows the institutions winning today lead with member pain, not product specs. (link)
Kobalt Labs CEO says start AI with vendor risk, not member-facing tools: Start AI adoption with third-party risk management because it requires no sensitive member data and keeps humans in the loop. Kobalt Labs automates vendor document review, flags fourth-party supply chain risks, and alerts Credit Unions to real-time vendor news without connecting to the core. (link)
Behavioral AI learns your workflows instead of replacing them: A third AI deployment model is emerging where agents observe real work patterns across an organization, surface shared inefficiencies, and build automation around how work actually gets done. Early results show 15-20 hours saved per week. (link)
Agentic Smart Collections AI resolves delinquency before relationships break: With Credit Union delinquency at 95 basis points in Q3 2025, agentic AI now runs coordinated voice, SMS, and email collections outreach within compliance guardrails, captures Promise-to-Pay commitments, and escalates to humans only when needed. (link)
US deposit growth slowed to 0.4% as acquisition costs hit $561 per account: AI is helping financial institutions stop the bleed by flagging at-risk members through behavioral signals like large withdrawals and dropping transaction frequency, then triggering personalized retention offers before members leave. (link)
CaixaBank deploys Salesforce Agentforce to guide in-app loan buyers: The Spanish bank’s new AI agent walks customers through pre-approved loan configurations, helping them define ideal terms and installments before handing off to a human specialist at signing. (link)
Motiv8AI adds behavioral science layer to cut loan defaults 50%: A digital bank in Brazil using Motiv8AI’s Relationship Intelligence Layer saw default rates drop over 50% and BNPL creditworthiness improve 35% by interpreting transaction data through a behavioral science lens. The platform also doubled response rates on member communications and boosted new credit card activation by over 40%. (link)
JPMorgan spends $2B on AI and saves roughly the same amount: Total headcount held flat at 318,512 while operations staff fell 4% and client-facing roles grew 4%, with operations employees handling 6% more accounts, fraud cost per unit down 11%, and software engineers 10% more productive. The bank is redeploying displaced workers into member-facing roles rather than cutting headcount. (link)
RBC creates dedicated AI Group to scale toward C$1B in value: Led by veteran tech executive Bruce Ross, the group will scale proprietary tools already in production, including the Atom credit adjudication model, RBC Assist used by 27,000 employees, and Aiden used by 8,000 Capital Markets staff across a workforce of 100,000 in 29 countries. (link)
Commonwealth Bank invests $90M to retrain 30,000 employees for AI: CEO Matt Comyn’s Future Workforce Program has already delivered AI training to 30,000 staff and includes a skills-based internal job portal to help employees move into higher-value roles. The bank is explicitly recruiting for judgment, critical thinking, and empathy alongside AI fluency. (link)
How one CFO built two board decks in an afternoon: Using ChatGPT, Claude, and Google NotebookLM, a CFO turned scattered notes into a 30-page transfer pricing policy covering five countries, then auto-generated executive presentations for the finance team and CEO. (link)
Funding Spotlight
Where the money is flowing for innovation…
Astelia raises $35M for agentic cybersecurity AI: The platform maps real network attack paths to identify genuinely exploitable vulnerabilities, filtering out noise. In some deployments, only 30 out of nearly 3 million flagged vulnerabilities created actual risk. (link)
Pluvo raises $5M Seed round to put agentic AI inside financial decision-making: The platform analyzes financial models, stress-tests forecasts, and captures the rationale behind past decisions to build institutional memory for CFO and FP&A teams. (link)
Thema raises $6.2M to replace static PE research with live AI analysis: Built with the University of Cambridge, Thema continuously maps how companies cluster into markets and where risk or adjacency sits across a portfolio, replacing one-time consulting reports with always-current intelligence. (link)
General Magic raises $7.2M Seed round to automate insurance workflows with AI agents: Early deployments cut time-to-quote from 30 minutes to under three minutes by running AI agents across pre-quote, post-quote, and claims coordination. (link)
Harper raises $47M Series A to automate commercial insurance brokerage: The platform reads applications, routes submissions, manages quotes, and liaises with underwriters automatically, delivering coverage in 24-48 hours. Harper has served 5,000 businesses across 165 underwriters in just 13 months. (link)
Rowspace launches with $50M Seed and Series A for finance AI: The platform connects structured and unstructured data across a firm’s entire history to help financial institutions make faster, fully informed decisions. Firms managing hundreds of billions in assets are already using it for portfolio monitoring, credit optimization, and deal analysis. (link)
Keeping up with Tech
The latest in fintech and tools…
Posh CoachQA brings full AI coverage to contact center QA: Most financial institutions review less than 1% of customer interactions, leaving compliance gaps, fraud signals, and missed revenue opportunities invisible until audit time. Posh CoachQA uses Retrieval-Augmented Evaluation to assess 100% of calls and chats against each institution’s own standards. (link)
Eleven Credit Unions launch AI Studio CUSO to share AI infrastructure: Founding members include Suncoast ($19.6B), Idaho Central ($14.7B), and MSUFCU ($8.3B), pooling resources to share vendor evaluation, readiness assessments, and fractional chief AI officer access. Solo AI adoption costs roughly $1.16M annually per institution, and AI Studio aims to deliver enterprise-grade capabilities at a fraction of that cost. (link)
Mastercard and Santander complete Europe’s first live AI agent payment: The transaction ran through Santander’s live payments infrastructure via Mastercard Agent Pay in a controlled pilot, marking the first end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent in Europe. Both institutions are now building the governance and technical frameworks needed to scale AI-initiated payments safely. (link)
Eltropy launches first agentic AI platform built for Credit Unions: Every agent action is logged, explainable, and constrained to approved SOPs across a single governance layer connecting institutions, fintechs, and core systems. Cobalt Credit Union reported 83% session containment on Eltropy AI Voice, and fintech Constant AI is already building a Skip-A-Pay agent on the platform. (link)
Microsoft rebuilds SharePoint as the knowledge backbone for Copilot: New custom AI skills let organizations package their own terminology, governance rules, and business logic so Copilot reasons against company-specific context rather than generic data. (link)
Klarna and Stripe embed BNPL into AI agent checkout flows: Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens let AI agents initiate purchases using a customer’s preferred payment method without accessing actual card details. Klarna’s BNPL options now pass through the same permissioned layer with no additional integration required for existing Stripe merchants. (link)
OpenAI releases GPT-5.3 Instant with sharply reduced hallucinations: The update cuts hallucination rates by 22 to 27% compared to prior models while reducing unnecessary refusals and improving web synthesis. Available now to all ChatGPT users and via API, with GPT-5.2 Instant retiring June 3, 2026. (link)
Figma and OpenAI Codex connect design files to working code via MCP: Developers can now pull layout, style, and component context from Figma directly into Codex for code generation, then push live UI back onto the Figma canvas as fully editable frames. The integration eliminates manual recreation between design and development workflows. (link)
Mistral Document AI launches in Microsoft Foundry for enterprise document processing: The model combines OCR and intelligent document understanding to extract structured data from loan applications, KYC forms, contracts, and multilingual documents with 99%+ recognition accuracy. Financial institutions can deploy it via the open-source ARGUS pipeline without building document processing infrastructure from scratch. (link)
Visa leads payments industry in AI maturity as talent gap widens: Evident’s benchmark shows payments companies carry 30% more AI-focused workers than other financial institutions, with Visa, Mastercard, and Amex accounting for nearly half the industry’s total AI talent. (link)
In Other News
Related news you can learn from…
Block cuts 40% of staff, citing AI productivity gains (link)
AI won’t kill enterprise software, it will make the best of it bigger (link)
Fed Governor Cook warns AI productivity boom could complicate rate policy (link)
Anthropic and Pentagon resume talks after contract breakdown over surveillance concerns (link)
Community Corner
Memes and visuals…
Thanks for reading!
Until next week,
— Credit Union AI Guy
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