“We’re not just investing in technology. We’re investing in member experience, employee efficiency and long-term growth.”
That was the tone set early by Jason Reimer, Executive Vice President and Chief Infrastructure and Experience Officer at SECU of Maryland, during a conversation that pulls back the curtain on what real digital transformation looks like inside a credit union. This isn’t just about new platforms or flashy tools. It’s about eliminating friction, catching up with evolving expectations, and future-proofing the member journey.
In a conversation moderated by The Credit Union Connection’s Sarah Snell Cooke, Jason joins MANTL Co-founder Nathaniel Harley to dig into the why behind their partnership, the how behind modernizing account opening, and the what’s-next that could reshape how credit unions compete and thrive.
You can sense the momentum. Jason speaks candidly about SECU’s leap from a fragmented member experience to a unified digital-first strategy. Nathaniel offers a behind-the-scenes look at how MANTL’s technology is engineered not just for consumers, but for frontline staff, back-office teams and the operational gears credit unions rely on to move fast and scale smarter.
This conversation isn’t mere navel gazing. There’s a practical edge to everything discussed. Jason points to their plans for automating up to 85% of membership applications with robust fraud prevention built in. He shares how reducing time in-branch opens up more space for human conversations, not less. Nathaniel expands on the need for better integration between onboarding and ongoing engagement, connecting the dots from account opening to long-term member loyalty.
The conversation never veers into product pitch territory. Instead, it reads like a strategy session between partners who understand where the credit union industry has been and where it needs to go.
Give it a watch. There’s something energizing about hearing people talk about fixing big problems—and actually doing it.
Disclosure: Transcript below is automatically generated
Sarah Snell Cooke
Hello and welcome everybody. My name is Sarah Snell Cooke. I am your host at The Credit Union Connection. I’m here today with two wonderful gentlemen. I have Jason Reimer on my left. He is the Executive Vice President, Chief infrastructure and Experience Officer at SECU of Maryland, welcome, thank you. And Nathaniel Harley. He is the Co-founder and President of MANTL, which is now an Aklami Solution. Welcome.
Jason Reimer
Thank you for having us
Sarah Snell Cooke
Okay. And just a quick disclaimer, the cranium connection is actually a member of the SECU of Maryland.
Jason Reimer
Appreciate we appreciate the partnership. That’s great.
Sarah Snell Cooke
So anyway, why don’t you, gentlemen, Jason, you start do a little more introduction of yourself and your credit union or your organization.
Jason Reimer
Well, Sarah, I want to be good by saying thank you for having us. This is an exciting topic. So SECU is Maryland’s largest state credit union. We have over 5.6 billion in assets currently 260,000 members. We serve our members through not only 23 in person branch financial centers, but we also have an industry recognized virtual financial center where members can go on and have the same interactions right from the from their computer, from their phone. We also are really spending a lot of time to develop our digital offerings online banking. We’re proud to be an Aklami customer. You know, Aklami has award winning products, and when we started talking about how, what do we need to improve the online account, opening experience was a huge one. So we were excited. We were we were going to select MANTL. And then right at the end, is when Nathaniel called me and said, Have a little news for you. Talk about a win, win, you know, to to so SECU is so SECU is so excited to be partners with not only alchemy, but MANTL and then coming together. But, you know, we originally the state employee Credit Union, but now SECU is throughout Maryland serving Marylanders. We’re about to stand up a small business banking program. So we’re just really excited to be part of the ecosystem throughout the Mid-Atlantic
Sarah Snell Cooke
Awesome. Thank you. And Nathaniel,
Nathaniel Harley
Yeah thanks so much for having us. And Jason echo those sentiments. Very excited to be partnering with you guys as well. So MANTL, as you said, is an Aklami solution team and a leading provider of the account origination technology. So really, what we do is we empower credit unions and banks to originate deposits or loans across any channel at any time. And so, you know what that means is we have a deep focus on building an amazing member experience and helping our clients, you know, really grow that member base digitally. We help them, you know, get lower cost deposits. We can help them expand into new territories, go national, things of that nature. And then we also focus deeply on on the employee experience as well, to ultimately bridge these two channels and have invested a lot in, you know, we believe that a better employee experience ultimately leads to a better member experience, and we drive a lot of automation and efficiency for those employees, whether they be in the branch or, you know, the sort of Salesforce out in the field, or the call center and all these, you know, come together to, you know, ultimately just create An amazing member experience and drive, you know, new member growth, deposit growth and massive efficiencies for the organizations that we work with,
Sarah Snell Cooke
Yeah, yeah. And that’s one of the big things we were talking before we started recording about the big things happenings. Automation is definitely one of them for creating efficiencies, and that’s important because, you know, craniums have always been known for their member service, and kind of when COVID hit, it was it highlighted a gap that credit unions had in their digital delivery of services. And you know, they fell below banks in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, and they’re still struggling to catch up. But we’re, we’re getting close better, one of the biggest problems is account opening. They’re notoriously abandoned things like that. So Nathaniel, why don’t you start talk about the trends that you’re seeing in credit unions regarding digital banking and specifically account opening.
Nathaniel Harley
Yeah. So you know, obviously, sort of expanding the channel mix outside of. Purely the branch and the vast majority of organizations today are relationship driven, branch driven organizations. And so, you know, what they’re thinking about is, how do we augment that through the digital channels to, you know, either meet our members where they want to be met, or, you know, sort of unlock new growth channels. You mentioned businesses. Could, you know, be a really attractive one as well. And so there’s a lot of opportunity in sort of bridging that, you know, sort of relationship banking ethos, which makes credit unions so good at what they do, and ultimately, why members, you know, bank with them, but giving them another tool in the arsenal to you know, better, better serve their better serve their members. And so you know, oftentimes what we find is it’s really important to show that you know you are able to meet your members online, or they’re able to do business with you digitally, even if they might prefer to walk into the branch. That’s sort of like an indication on how forward thinking the institution is. But then, once you roll out a solution, you kind of hit on a number of things. There are a number of things we focus on right conversion rate is really important, making sure we’re able to get the member, you know, through the funnel in a short amount of time, and convert a large number of those potential applicants into actual members, deep focus on the value of the member, a lot of focus around fraud. And you know, you will see fraud on in the digital channels. And so the goal is to stop it and make sure, you know, we don’t, we don’t let it in. And then, you know, how do we drive efficiency in the organization to allow the credit union to ultimately scale at a much larger rate without necessarily adding a lot of headcount, which is, which is really important. And you know, I would say all of that is true for both this sort of consumers as well as as businesses. And the ability to have one platform that ultimately, you know, is able to serve any type of you know, member, whether it’s an individual or small business or a commercial business, across any channel, gives the partners we work with a lot of power.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Mm, hmm, absolutely. And so. So Jason, I’m going to turn to you. How do you see, how does mobile banking and account opening viewed as a strategic tool at your credit union?
Jason Reimer
Well, stepping back, we look at the digital experience being a critical part of the omnichannel delivery. We want to make it so at SECU, whether a member chooses to engage us with in person through the branch network, whether they’re using our call center, whether they’re using our website, the mobile app, we want to make sure it’s a consistent experience across the board. So when you talk about account opening right now, it’s a very different process at SECU, using our legacy account opening versus going into a branch, and that’s on the consumer side, the consumer account, we’re opening an account and half the time in a branch, and we are on our website, our online banking, that’s That’s ludicrous. So when you’re talking about investments that we need to make, that’s a key one. And then you get into the business side. Right now, we don’t even have the ability to open a business account on our website, and it takes almost an hour and a half in our branches to open a business account. So when we’re thinking about what are the investments that we need to make from that digital experience, it needs to go to strategically. Because you asked that the strategy, the strategy, the base strategy, it’s one of our strategic pillars, is the Omni child delivery. It has to be a great experience no matter what channel the member engages in. MANTL really helps me account opening. It helped us solve a lot of those issues. So it just was a really good strategic bet there. Yeah, and
Nathaniel Harley
Maybe, maybe one thing I just layer into that, you know, obviously we work with many online and mobile banking providers and you know, many different core providers. But what’s really cool now that MANTL and Aklami are under one roof, is, how do you create this better together? Story that ultimately, you know, makes that first impression a member has with your organization, incredible, right? How do you, you know, sort of open that account and then get them into online banking and onboard them successfully. How do you unify that member experience so it doesn’t feel like you’re losing one platform? And then ultimately, to Jason’s point, how do you grow, right? How do you engage your members more? How do you deepen the share of wallet? How do you go attract new prospects onto the platform? So I think there’s a lot of power now that we’re able to work with Jason and his team.
Jason Reimer
Yeah, and one thing I want to add to that, and it’s another part of our strategy, but it’s we ought to be able to add and grow with safety and soundness in mind. And that’s another really great part of this platform, is when you think about, I. Um, you know, it’s not only going to speed things up for our membership, it’s also automating, you know, and Nathaniel mentioned about doing it without, with growing, without adding more headcount, you know, about 85% we’re estimating our applications for membership are gonna be able to be approved through the automated systems with MANTL, and that’s with best in class fraud technologies. So, you know, I know in the thing I mentioned earlier about the prevalence of fraud in the online account system, that is absolutely an issue that we’ve seen. So the beautiful, one of the beautiful things about MANTL and their partners on the fraud side is when that 85% approval that’s going through a much more rigorous, know your customer test, the AML checks, the BSA checks, and then you layer along what they do on the business side, where they’re checking the viability of the business, their corporate file. These type of integrations that is bringing together is, frankly, not only important for SECU, but when you talk about the industry, and you mentioned about the industry, and we got to catch up with banks, one of the things that the that our banking partners do really well is they’re investing in the technology credit unions are behind, notoriously, as you mentioned. So it’s how do we leverage these the fintechs and these third party providers let them do what they’re best at. And that’s one of the things that in the last you know, several months at SECU, we’ve been talking strategically, who are the partners that we can bring to the table. Let them do what they’re best at, so we can do what we’re we are great at servicing our members. We are great at bringing great loan and deposit products we need to add on, then strong technology partners to make a much more well rounded, not only experience for the member, but this is also just as much about the employee experience. When you talk about improving the time in a branch to open an account that’s giving our employees more time to get to know the member, understand their needs when we can improve the BSA and the fraud checks in the background. From a safety and soundness standpoint, we’re reducing the workload on the fraud team so they can work on more pressing needs. So that’s why all of these when we’re talking about strong Technology Partnerships, it needs to be about bringing everything together to improve both the member and employee experience,
Sarah Snell Cooke
Absolutely too often we overlook our employees, not not just tools, they’re humans. I totally get that. And I think Jason, you also answered probably my next couple of questions. Skip through my my list here. But so Gee, or excuse me, Nathaniel, what are the most common questions that you get from credit union leaders when they’re looking at MANTL?
Nathaniel Harley
Yeah, so look, I think the way we like to, you know, enter into these conversations, is very consultative. We want to understand, ultimately, what’s the business strategy, what are the goals, what are the outcomes the organization is trying to achieve? And then we sort of work backwards from there. And so, you know, oftentimes they fall into two buckets, right? Sort of what we call market expansion, whether that’s lower cost deposits, growing their member base, you know, moving into different territories, or operational efficiency. And how do we, you know, as Jason was saying, Make this employee experience incredible, but also do it efficiently so they get all this time back they can now spend with the member who’s sitting right in front of them. And, you know, you could imagine a world where, you know, you hire a new branch employee tomorrow, because we’ve built in, you know, essentially digitized the experience for them, they could start opening really complex accounts on day two, and, you know, sort of have have a guided experience. So, you know, really where we like to go deep is on this omnichannel experience, and how do we really bridge these two channels and make sure that we allow our partners to meet their members where they want to be met? So we get a lot of questions on that we go, I would say, probably versus others, like really, really deep on the origination side, because we’ve invested, you know, a lot of money in sort of building out the platform, and, you know, feel like it’s pretty robust, not just from a sort of feature and functionality perspective, but also the breadth of members that we can support, the different account types we can support, and all of that, at the end of the day, is what drives outcomes for the institution. And we like to say, you know, our partner success is our success. If they’re not hitting their goals, we’re not doing our job. And what we need to do, in addition to that, is really provide a deep level of partnership and best practices to sort of, you know, give the keys and say, here’s what we’re seeing in these different areas. Oh, you want to optimize for member growth, or you want to optimize for deposits. Here are the things that I would tweak to ultimately achieve those, you know, specific outcomes. But we believe. You know, it takes both of those pillars, really amazing product, but also really strong partnership. And we’ve tried to invest a lot in people that have worked at credit unions and banks and have actually done the job to make sure we’re bridging, you know, smart engineers and product people with people who actually, you know, banking and credit unions.
Sarah Snell Cooke
Absolutely, that’s awesome to have that intentionality. So Jason, what do you think are some of the important things that cranes should be looking for when they’re looking at a new account, opening solution?
Jason Reimer
I think something Nathaniel just said is really an important part, and one of the things that was key in our decision process, and that’s, who’s the part? Who’s your going to be your partner? You know, as when I was talking earlier about, from a strategic standpoint, credit unions, we’re really good at service, you know, we’re really good at being committed to the community and the people helping peach people. Mantra that, that we talk about through that the credit unions, we got to make sure the partners that we’re bringing into the ecosystem are, are just that, you know, Nathaniel mentioned about them giving advice because they have the expertise. They’ve, they’ve, they’ve worked with both banks and credit unions, and they’re bringing that best in class. You know, another thing that really impressed us about MANTL in the conversations is the roadmap. I know Nathaniel and I had a few conversations about what’s on their roadmap, what’s coming down. They were open about it. And there were a number of times where, and even since we’ve gotten implementation, where they’re asking us, hey, what do you think? It’s a two way conversation? That’s one of the things that doesn’t come out necessarily in the traditional RFP processes. What is the partner going to truly be like? You know? So is that when I talk to you know, colleagues throughout the credit union industry, on any topic, when they’re talking, when they’re vetting, you know, who’s who, one of the things I always say is, reach out to your connections. Don’t necessarily just talk to the vendors preferred contact list on who they should talk to you from referral, but reach out to your network and find out who are they using and why. Ask a question about roadmap, ask the questions about accessibility to the C suite. Ask questions about, what are their investments going to be? Because it’s one thing to also talk about a roadmap. It’s a whole nother thing to talk about, what are they doing from an investment standpoint. I think that was the first question I had to Nathaniel when he called me to talk when we talked about the Acme a SECU institution signed the contract. Is Aklami going to be committed to making the investments in the MANTL platform moving forward. Luckily, we’ve been on Aklami long enough that I understand Aklami absolutely invests in their solutions. They invest in their roadmap. But I think these are the considerations. So account opening. Those are, I think, important considerations, because technology is changing constantly. But then there’s obviously the fundamentals. You know, what’s the automation going to be on the on the accounts? From an opening standpoint, what is the who are the providers in the background behind their know your customer, the PSA and AML checks. Are they bringing the best in class through their services. Funding. You know, people aren’t, don’t think about the funding, but do the deep dive and understand how is the funding mechanism going to work? Because you can have the shiniest widget, but at the end of the day, if a member can’t fund the account, and you can’t get that going, Yeah, that person might open, open an account, but then they’re never fun to share account, and then it’s not true, truly. So these are really things that were in our in our mind. I’d say the other thing that we talked about was, how fast is the opening process, both online and in person, because we want to make sure that if it’s online, the member is not spending 45 minutes clicking through and trying to how quick can it be done online, and if it’s in person, needs to be same speed, but allow our employee to have a real conversation. So, you know, those are all those considerations for that we looked at for one line account opening, yeah,
Sarah Snell Cooke
Yeah. And that’s a lot. It’s a lot, it’s all important too. So we are coming to the end, gentlemen, and I always allow my guests a final thought for our credit union audience. Who wants to go first? Jason, that you okay go there.
Speaker 3
I thought you were saying that was different than Nathaniel, yeah,
Nathaniel Harley
No, look, I think it’s a really, really exciting time in the industry, and credit unions are really well positioned if they have the right digital tools to transform and so, you know, we started this company because we care deeply about helping to level the plan. Field and helping making credit unions and banks successful. So you know, we’re just honored to be working with partners like Sekou and Jason and his team, and there’s a lot of exciting things ahead. Awesome.
Jason Reimer
Yep, I’d say it is a great time to be in the credit union space. It’s a great time, though, provided that we are continuing to forge new partnerships and relationships, you know, the partnership between SECU and MANTL, it underscores the foundation of at SECU. We’re going to put our we’re going to put our members first. We’re going to continue to serve Maryland and grow in Maryland by investing in sensible, real-time solutions, and that’s what the credit union industry needs to keep doing if we want to compete with banks and also fintechs that are now entering the deposit lending space. So you know, appreciate the conversation. Sarah, thank you for the invitation. It’s always an honor to talk to people in the industry about where we’re headed, because if we don’t keep investing, we’re not we are going to fall behind and not be able to live out the people helping people mantra that our industry requires
Sarah Snell Cooke
Absolutelynd it. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.