Eltropy will host a webinar with IDgo and InTouch Credit Union on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, titled “Modernizing Member Authentication: InTouch CU’s Leap to Agentic Trust,” covering how the credit union swapped knowledge-based authentication for device-based verification and what it got in return.
The old method will be familiar to anyone who has called their credit union: what was your first car, what street did you grow up on, now please read us the code we just texted you. Those checks have a purpose, but asking them on every call slows things down and irritates members who already proved who they are. It also eats time staff could spend on whatever the member actually called about. The stakes rise further as credit unions bring AI agents into the mix, since an automated conversation can only go as far as the institution trusts the person on the line. Think of the old “Who goes there?” challenge from a medieval gatehouse, repeated at every door of the castle.
InTouch serves more than 70,000 members across all 50 states and 20 countries, with over $800 million in assets. It tackled the problem by moving to device-based authentication through Eltropy’s integration with IDgo. The results so far:
- Monthly IDgo authentication volume is up 1,034%.
- The share of member interactions authenticated with IDgo climbed from 2% to 24%.
- Successful authentication through Eltropy AI Voice Agent nearly doubled.
- Live-agent calls now spend 60 to 90 fewer seconds on authentication, which frees roughly 250 hours of employee capacity each month across 10,000 calls.
In the session, leaders from InTouch, IDgo and Eltropy will explain how the shift happened and how staff and members adapted. They’ll also show how a trusted device relationship carries from a live call to an AI voice conversation, so nobody gets sent back through the same questions. The roadmap is on the agenda too: more member interactions, more service channels and high-trust transactions. Open Q&A follows. Speakers are Kristen Schmieg-Jester, SVP and Chief Digital Officer at InTouch; Rocky Scales, CEO of IDgo; and Abhishek Tiwari, Chief Product Officer at Eltropy.
“Authentication should establish trust, not become a barrier to service,” Schmieg-Jester said. She says the partnership let InTouch modernize identity verification and cut friction for members and employees alike. A persistent trust framework spanning employee-assisted and AI-powered interactions, she added, means faster, more personalized service without giving up the security members expect.
Tiwari framed the results as an answer to a question every credit union adopting agentic AI will face. “Credit unions want AI agents working for their members, and the first thing any of those agents needs to know is who it’s talking to,” he said. InTouch settled that at the device level and let the answer follow the member from a live call to an AI conversation and back, which gives a credit union the identity certainty it needs before trusting an AI agent with anything important. In his words, Schmieg-Jester’s team has real numbers to show for it.
Scales put it plainly: a member’s phone can carry trust from one conversation to the next, so the credit union doesn’t rebuild it from scratch each time. Once that trusted device relationship existed, every later interaction, human or AI, started on firmer ground. That, he said, is what lets agentic AI move quickly without cutting security corners.
If you run or work in a credit union contact center, this one is worth a calendar slot. Shaving a minute or more off every call adds up fast, and the same trust setup is what makes AI voice agents viable for your members. You’ll hear what the transition looked like from people who’ve done it, and you can ask your own questions before deciding whether your member verification process is due for an upgrade.