Ink on the Interview
Q: What are your responsibilities at Eltropy?
A: I’ve been with Eltropy for close to five years now. I lead two of our important areas of the organization. I lead our solutions engineering team, which predominantly work with our sales and our clients in designing what the solutions should look like at the beginning of the process. And then I work with our product integrations team, which define how our product will actually fit and integrate with all different technologies that are out there across the very large space.
Q: You talked about everything here but was there a theme or a focus for this time? Things are changing so fast in the FinTech space, what’s on the docket for you guys?
A: So it’s all about the conversations. We’ve heard about it all day long today, that it’s all about the conversations. There are multiple things that are going on at the same time. In 2025, I think that this is the era of transformation in principle, because there’s a lot of multitude of trends across contact centers, across CRMs, across membership growth, across different platonics.
So there’s too many tectonics that are shifting, it’s restructuring the landscape, and as we are going forward, that transformative year of, we will see a restructuring of the landscape. So for us, the general theme is, it’s all about the conversations, and take it one notch up, it is about helping credit unions to accomplish the mission, which is financial access to all, anytime, anywhere. That’s the core of what we do. And everything that we do kind of pivots back and connects back to that.
Q: What pain points are you answering here for credit unions? Because obviously we’re dealing with multiple demographics in the industry right now. Some people enjoy using this, I think most people enjoy using this, but there’s other people that enjoy visiting the branch, other people are just online or at their desktops.
A: The main point at Eltropy that we help resolve the credit union is meet the member where he or she wants to be met. Do not force them to meet you where they may not want to meet you. As we go forward, I believe, again, the trends will change where the Gen Z’s, millennials, the embedded finance will pick up because they don’t want to use a separate banking application and stay out in different. The finance needs to be embedded and be part of their day-to-day life. Being part of your Netflix app, being part of your Uber app, and being part of any other apps that you use from a day-to-day standpoint. This is what we help at Eltropy in uncovering those trends in terms of what’s happening in the marketplace, and how do you adopt those trends specifically from a member communication standpoint. Those are the pain points that we solve at Eltropy.
Q: You were in a couple of sessions. What did you talk about here? What’s your message to the audience here?
A: Start somewhere. This is the era of changes upon us. There is a resurgence of omnichannel, a resurgence of AI, and you know, the evolving customer expectations are the crux of all of these things. So if there is one message that I would like to give somebody, and specifically my credit union friends is, in this era of change, in this era of transformation, start somewhere. Do not be afraid. Embrace the change. Open it with welcome arms and see what the future holds for all of us. This is not a moment to be scared. This is a moment to be brave. Take that leap of faith and change the behavior. The traditional high-touch business now needs to be high-tech while we preserve the high-touch. So that’s the message that I would like to give, Start somewhere. Pick a department, see where the efficiencies, inefficiencies are. See what you can change from an experience standpoint. Think end-to-end. Do not think into a small little box. That’s the only way that we all can survive and grow together in this space. Because if you don’t start, it’s not going to be a pretty picture. Yeah, for sure. This is a question of sustenance. And this is what I think we should do.
Q: What did you take away from this conference? Was there anything that you said, you know what, I can use that?
A: It’s a good question. I think if there is one thing that I took away, personally, is I need to get better at names. I met so many people. And they’re like, they know, but I don’t know who they are. So I need to learn that and remember who I am working with. So that’s on a personal note. But on a principal side of the equation, I think this conference in a lot of ways validated what we are seeing in the marketplace. There is a change. And some people are on the front end of the change, while others are being skeptical about the change, and while others are just starting to think about the change. So we have varying degrees of change. This conference was a lot of way of validation of that. And if I were to take one thing back, the fusion of communications and CRM, which kept coming up again and again. So that’s a message that we need to take back and say, OK, how do we now help and give back more as we come back next year.
