No branches. No legacy systems. No waiting room with a candy dish. Just a laser focus on a specific community that had been asking for this for 20 years.
Jeffrey Kendall, chairman and CEO of Nymbus, and Stephen Owen, president and CEO of both First Entertainment Credit Union and its new digital spinoff CineFi, joined Sarah Snell Cooke of The Credit Union Connection to talk about one of the more quietly ambitious projects in the credit union space right now. CineFi launched Jan. 12, in Atlanta, built specifically to serve the entertainment industry workers who have been migrating there for years, chasing film tax incentives. Three weeks in, the numbers were already turning heads.
The backstory matters here. First Entertainment has been serving grips, gaffers, set directors, makeup artists and hair stylists in Hollywood for 60 years. They know this community.
What they noticed over the last few years was that their members were moving to Georgia, and there was nobody in Atlanta waiting to serve them. About 60,000 to 70,000 people in and around the city work in film, TV and entertainment. When Stephen and his team went down there to gauge interest, people told them they had been waiting 20 years for something like this. So they built it digitally on the Nymbus platform, under a new brand built for a new geography.
Jeffrey makes the point that a digital credit union with a cool logo and a debit card is not a strategy. The hook matters. What made CineFi interesting to build was that First Entertainment showed up as a development partner, not just a client. They came with ideas for things nobody in the market had built yet, specifically around financial wellness and curated content for entertainment workers. These are people who do not work nine to five and do not get regular paychecks. Generic budgeting tools built for salaried employees are not going to cut it. So they built something specific, and they did it together.
“They never said no. What they said was, we will figure this out.” — Stephen Owen
One feature that stands out is the prospect portal. Most financial institutions require you to open a product before they will talk to you. CineFi flipped that. Anyone can sign up, access curated financial content built specifically for entertainment workers, and build a relationship with the credit union before ever opening an account. The logic is simple: do good things for the community, and the community will join. Not everyone will, and that is fine. The ones who do will already know who CineFi is.
Stephen’s closing thought is the one that sticks. Two and a half years ago they considered building this themselves. It would have taken much longer and cost much more. The decision to find the right technology partner, make a modest equity investment in Nymbus, and co-develop something genuinely new got them to market in a fraction of the time. That is not just a CineFi story. It is a case study in what calculated risk and genuine partnership actually look like.
NOTE: If transcription were this AI’s superpower, it would be a very disappointing superhero origin story.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Hey everyone, Sarah Snell Cooke with The Credit Union Connection. Think of this. A credit union that did not exist less than a month ago grew 400 members and $7 million in its first weeks of opening. No branches, no legacy systems, just a laser focus on user experience and financial wellness for a very niche industry. Today I am talking with Jeffrey Kendall, CEO at Nymbus, and Stephen Owen, who is wearing two hats as CEO of both First Entertainment Credit Union and their shiny new digital credit union, CineFi. CineFi is exactly what it sounds like: a credit union built specifically to serve the entertainment industry, in this case in Atlanta, Georgia. First Entertainment watched as the TV and movie business migrated from California to Georgia chasing film tax incentives. We are diving into why they went digital only with Nimbus instead of opening physical branches and how they are thinking about community engagement without a lobby.
Hello, welcome everyone. I am Sarah Snell Cooke, your host here at The Credit Union Connection. I am joined today by Jeffrey Kendall. Welcome.
Jeffrey Kendall
Thank you. Appreciate being here.
Sarah Snell Cooke
And Stephen Owen. Welcome.
Stephen Owen
Thank you. Great to be here.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Stephen is the president and CEO at First Entertainment Credit Union and now CineFi. Jeffrey is chairman and CEO of Nimbus. Jeffrey, start us off with a little bit about yourself and the company.
Jeffrey Kendall
I am a career technologist and have the privilege of leading Nimbus. We are a core processing and digital banking company. We serve community credit unions, banks, and fintechs. Our objective is to bring innovative technology to help our clients grow. At the end of the day, what we are really most concerned about is being critical to their operations and being efficient. That is our mission and objective.
Sarah Snell Cooke
And Stephen, tell us a little bit about your credit union.
Stephen Owen
I am the president and CEO of First Entertainment Credit Union, based in Hollywood. We serve the entertainment sector, mainly the below-the-line people, the hardworking people of entertainment: grips, gaffers, set directors, makeup artists, hair stylists. We have been doing it for 60 years. And we have now opened CineFi, a new brand built on the Nimbus platform in a new geographic area for us, which is Atlanta, Georgia. There has been a huge migration of people to Atlanta over the last 15 to 20 years. We are excited to now be serving the entertainment community there as of January 12th. It is a really strong and growing community.
Sarah Snell Cooke
As a former credit union reporter, I was curious about the charter. Did you have to do anything to change that?
Stephen Owen
As a state-chartered credit union in California, we had to go to California first and then to Georgia’s regulator as well, and ask for permission to serve people in Georgia with CineFi. We did that last year. We have eight counties in and around Atlanta that we can serve, which covers about 60% of the metropolitan Atlanta area, and all the entertainment people based there.
Sarah Snell Cooke
We are seeing many TV shows and movies moving to Georgia because of tax incentives. How did the expansion planning process work?
Stephen Owen
This journey started about two and a half years ago. We looked at our membership and saw them continuing to migrate away from LA. Georgia put in some pretty lucrative tax incentives about 15 years ago to draw the movie and TV industry, and as we looked at our own growth and expansion opportunities, the data told us a lot of our members were going to Georgia. We found there are about 60,000 to 70,000 people in and around Atlanta who work in film, TV, and entertainment. That is what drove us to Georgia. We came up with the concept of geographic expansion with a new brand, went out to find a technology partner, and Nimbus has been tremendous. They helped us all along that journey over the last two years, and we are live today and it is going incredibly well.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Jeffrey, digital is obviously a less expensive way to serve members. What kinds of things were you looking for as you helped them build CineFi?
Jeffrey Kendall
What I love about what First Entertainment and CineFi came to us with is that I think they are at the forefront of where banking is going as both a technology and a strategy. We are living in an environment where the mega banks own about 70% of deposits in this country, and they are very generic in their products and services. Very broad, very commoditized. Credit unions on the other hand, from their very birthright, are focused around a particular mission, vision, or common cause. That commonality around a specific type of member or geography has always served credit unions well because it gave them a way to compete against generic and commoditized. But as mega banks go everywhere digitally, credit unions have to find new ways to compete. What First Entertainment has done is a perfect example of using the original mission and vision of why credit unions were established in the first place, while becoming even more relevant by focusing on a specific market segment. This is a beautiful evolution of their mission into another geography, a more modern brand that says this is a digital experience, and they are creating optionality for their markets and members. We have been really excited about it.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Stephen, anything to add to that?
Stephen Owen
I would just say that when you look at credit unions in general, the three things you have to deliver well are a great experience, value back to members, and connection to a community. As Jeffrey mentioned, the film community is what we have known for 60 years. We are not going outside of that, we are just going to a different locale where people have migrated over time. Our members are moving to Georgia and CineFi is a digital-only solution for them. Many of the people there want great value, a great experience, and to do it in a community that cares about them and understands them. First Entertainment has really understood the entertainment worker for many years. They do not work nine to five. They do not make a regular paycheck. They have very volatile earnings. We have understood that and we are going to do the same thing for CineFi in Atlanta. Many people down there have told me they have been waiting on us for 20 years. There has been nobody in Georgia serving the entertainment community the way CineFi will. We have been going down there for the last year and a half and people keep saying they cannot wait until we get there. So it is really exciting.
Sarah Snell Cooke
And as you mentioned, they do not work regular hours, so being able to manage banking at 10 p.m. without meeting anybody is a great acknowledgement of who you are actually serving. How are members receiving it so far?
Stephen Owen
Jeffrey and I look at the data every day. We are already over 400 members in about three weeks and have a little over $7 million in deposits. It is being received incredibly well. We are seeing it grow every single day. The way Nimbus helped us architect this, it is all done through the app. It is really simple and intuitive and gives us the ability to scale really fast. The fraud detection tools and everything Jeffrey’s team has built into the Nimbus platform have been incredible. You have to balance risk management all the time and they are doing a fantastic job of helping us pick up the right members while also flagging those who could be trying to do harm.
Jeffrey Kendall
One thing people sometimes underestimate when you start a digital brand is the speed and velocity of fraud and bad actors. When you open up to the world, you get more people trying to come in. You have to work extra diligently to prevent that. It is never 100%, and anybody who tells you otherwise is not being straight with you. But you do your best to keep up with it. It is important work.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Credit unions are known for wanting to be boots on the ground. You do not have anyone physically there. What do you incorporate that is unique to serving this membership while managing compliance and fraud risk?
Jeffrey Kendall
One mistake I think people commonly make when building a new digital experience is creating just another brand with a cool logo and a nice debit card and expecting that to be enough. You have to be able to articulate that you are going to solve a specific problem or serve people in a more convenient way. We always ask: what is the hook? This was a really exciting project for us because CineFi and First Entertainment showed up as development partners, not just clients. They came with ideas for things they said would be really good for members that they did not think anyone in the market had. So we built some things together that we had not built before, specifically for this project and this type of member. A lot of that had to do with financial wellness, budgeting, goals, different incentives, and a lot of financial education. These are people who know the entertainment industry inside and out but may not fully understand all the financial products available to them. We also built what I think was really unique, and I give all the credit to the First Entertainment team for this: most banks and credit unions do not allow you to establish a relationship before you have an account or product. What CineFi has done is open that up. You can belong to CineFi and access good content and tools without even opening a product yet. They are taking a relationship-based approach to member acquisition: let us start by showing you what our value is, and then we will show you the products we can help you with. That is genuinely advanced thinking compared to what we typically see in the market.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Stephen, why is that your approach?
Stephen Owen
It is about being inclusive. Financial wellness is an overused term, and everybody has some content out there. What we tried to do with CineFi, and what Jeffrey and Nimbus allowed us to do, was build curated content specifically for people in entertainment and put that right into the app. We built a prospect portal where you do not have to join the credit union to access it. We want to do good things for that community because if we do good things, they are going to tell other people. Not everybody is going to join, but they can take that content and use it. It gives us an opportunity to know who is there and engage with them over time. We wanted to give back to that community differently than others have done it.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Leading with the relationship rather than the product is something a lot of credit unions have missed. How was the development partnership with Nimbus actually working?
Stephen Owen
It was fantastic. Nimbus’s mindset aligned really well with ours about building something new and different. They never said no. What they said was, we will figure this out. You have to love that. With any big initiative like this, you go through ebbs and flows and challenges. Jeffrey and I always kept an open line of communication. We had a delay here and there, but we were all focused on getting this out to the community we wanted to serve and making sure it was really good before we launched. When we delivered it, I think we can both be incredibly proud of what we put out there.
Jeffrey Kendall
Our best ideas come from our clients. They are the ones with the problems. They can express where they need something better. We are not living their reality every single day. That co-development mindset was really important here. And Nimbus has a CUSO with a number of credit unions as equity investment partners, which holds us accountable in more ways than one. It is not just about delivering the product. I have an obligation to run a well-run company and I share in the success and the challenges with my clients and investors. We were grateful that First Entertainment made a modest equity investment in the firm. That really shows what true partnership means.
Sarah Snell Cooke
You work with both credit unions and banks. What differences do you see between the two?
Jeffrey Kendall
Banks are starting to figure out what credit unions have known for years: when you specialize, it makes it easier to be effective instead of fighting the generic battle against the mega banks. I also see credit unions starting to expand into products and services they have always had but never fully focused on, like small business and corporate banking. Those are areas where we are seeing a lot of interest from the credit union side. Banks are still figuring out how to think like a credit union and get smart about specialization.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Stephen, how do you share your member needs with a business partner like Nimbus and really collaborate on the vision?
Stephen Owen
Jeffrey and team are great listeners. They understood what we were trying to do and understood that the creative community operates differently, works differently, lives differently. We only have a spending account and a savings account at CineFi today, but we are going to expand that over time. Jeffrey and team worked with us on that timeline together. It is about sharing your story of what you want to accomplish, having them understand it, and then helping bring it to life. The best I have ever seen in working with technology partners. They listened, they adapted. Sometimes you have to come to an agreement that you cannot have it exactly as you envisioned at first, but you will get something similar, and over time maybe you get to the end state you wanted. You have to negotiate what is reasonable and what can be done in the time frame you need. Jeffrey and Nimbus have been fantastic at delivering on that. It is about knowing who you are, what you are going to serve, and what you are going to bring to the table for your members. We are delivering that now, and we are going to expand. Everybody comes to me asking about loans. We do not have loans at CineFi today, but we will soon enough thanks to the continued work we are doing with Nimbus.
Jeffrey Kendall
Two things are interesting about building for the entertainment market specifically. Number one, they are tough graders. You cannot put out a ten-year-old app experience to people who work on animation and see the most visually stunning products come out every day. There has to be alignment between the experience and what they believe is high quality. And what was a happy coincidence for us is that our head of product management, Ed Gross, spent 15 years of his career as a 3D animator in the film industry before getting into banking and app design. To see that passion on our team of wanting to truly understand what this community needs and build something special for them was a really fun part of this project.
Sarah Snell Cooke
What is next for CineFi?
Stephen Owen
We want to continue to grow. We just launched less than a month ago in Atlanta and the results are already really exciting. The infrastructure they have built down there is incredible and I think it is going to keep growing. The tax incentives for film and TV do move around, so part of the beauty of working with Nimbus and having the CineFi brand is that it can be agile and nimble based on where things shift. But for the next year we are focused on Georgia. There is a burgeoning creative community down there with music, content creation, live events, arts and culture. We have our hands full and we are very happy with the results so far. The technology and what CineFi has built can be moved to other cities as needed. You will probably see us move to other locales. I am not at liberty to say where yet, but I do see growth opportunities in many other areas of the US in the coming years.
Sarah Snell Cooke
I thought we were going to break some news here.
Stephen Owen
Not quite yet.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Jeffrey, what is next for Nimbus?
Jeffrey Kendall
Specifically for Nimbus and CineFi, there are some really exciting opportunities we are looking at together. As you start building a body of members around a particular use case and voice, our joy is engaging with that community and understanding what else they need and what we can build to make their lives easier. You can take your best guess in a conference room as your first draft of an idea, but if you do not check that against reality repeatedly, you can end up with something suboptimal. I am super excited about having more and more members tell us what they want. That is how you end up with something great.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Final thoughts, gentlemen. Jeffrey, go ahead.
Jeffrey Kendall
I am super appreciative of Stephen and First Entertainment and the people who make bets on us as a company. I think he is doing important work and these examples are important for the entire industry. I have the privilege of meeting and discussing with interesting credit union leaders every single day, and I can tell you there are a lot of common problems around survivability and how to continue to be a movement. This is how you do it. This is how you make interesting bets. Not super risky bets, but calculated ones. If I had to say one thing about the financial services industry, it is on the slower side when it comes to making new bets because of the risk balance. But when you figure it out, you can do great things. This is inspiring to the industry as a whole and we need it to survive.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Stephen, take us home.
Stephen Owen
We would not be where we are with CineFi this quickly without Nimbus. Two and a half years ago we thought about trying to do this ourselves, and that would have been a very long journey. When we engaged with Nimbus about a year and a half to two years ago, it became clear we could get this to market rapidly. You have to try new things and different things. I am lucky to have a board of directors that is very progressive and thinks future forward about how to continue to evolve and transform this credit union to serve the entertainment and creative community well for many generations to come. You have to do endeavors like this. You have to take calculated risks. If we all keep doing what we have been doing and expect different results, it is going to be pretty challenging. This is our leap forward. What the future holds I am very optimistic about. But we have to continue to pivot and be agile and nimble along the way to make sure CineFi, First Entertainment, and quite frankly the collective credit union community are safe and secure for the future.
Sarah Snell Cooke
From your mouth to their ears. Well, thank you all. I appreciate having you today.
Jeffrey Kendall
Thanks very much.