The future of mobile banking will be ‘thoughtful’ – at least for Shoreline Hometown Credit Union. Our Founder/CEO, Sarah Snell Cooke, recently interviewed Nathan Grossenbach, President/CEO of Shoreline Hometown Credit Union, and Denny Howell, COO at Mahalo, to shed light on the evolving landscape of mobile banking and what it takes to thrive in this competitive environment.
Shoreline Hometown CU, a $139 million credit union, is enhancing its member experience by upgrading its mobile banking provider. Nathan emphasizes their commitment to serving diverse member groups, from long-standing patrons dating back to the 1950s to newer members in urban areas. This dedication led Shoreline to seek a mobile banking provider that could cater to both traditional preferences for simplicity and the modern demand for advanced features like external transfers and budgeting tools. Their search ultimately led them to Mahalo, a digital banking company focused on empowering credit unions of all sizes. (Article continues below the video, but you better watch the video.)
Denny highlights the company’s commitment to providing a comprehensive platform that eliminates the need for credit unions to seek multiple third-party solutions for various services. He also touches upon “thoughtful banking,” an inclusive approach that ensures accessibility for all members, including those with disabilities. This focus on inclusivity and completeness sets Mahalo apart in the digital banking space.
The discussion also delves into the unique challenges and opportunities faced by smaller credit unions. Nathan explains that digital engagement has increased dramatically for Shoreline, with monthly member touchpoints reaching nearly 300,000, primarily through digital channels. He believes that a strong mobile banking solution allows smaller credit unions to compete effectively with larger institutions, offering superior technology alongside personalized service. Denny echoes this sentiment, stressing the importance of equal access to advanced features for credit unions regardless of their asset size.
The interview also touches on the critical role of business banking features, such as QuickBooks integration, and the seamless user experience offered by a social security number-centric login system, which consolidates various accounts into a single, accessible view.
What keeps credit union leaders up at night when it comes to mobile offerings? How does Mahalo’s roadmap address these concerns? And what truly makes or breaks mobile banking for the younger generations, like Gen Z and millennials? Discover the answers to these questions and more by watching the full video interview. Nathan and Denny offer their final thoughts on the importance of continuous exploration and informed decision-making in the ever-evolving world of digital banking. Don’t miss out on these invaluable insights!
Disclosure: Transcript below is automatically generated
Sarah Cooke
Hello, welcome everybody. This is Sarah Snell Cooke your host with the credit union connection. I’m here today with these two fine gentlemen. Nathan Grossenbach, welcome. Hello, and Nathan is the president CEO at the $139 million Shoreline Hometown Credit Union. And also we have today. Danny Howell, welcome. Hello, repeat offender here, who is the COO at Mahalo. And why don’t you go both go a little bit deeper into your introductions of yourself and your organization. Nathan, start with you
Nathan Grossenbach
Sure. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. So as you mentioned, I’m the president, CEO of Shoreline Hometown Credit Union. I’ve been here for almost 13 years, and I would say that we’re a smaller credit union, but we are thriving, and we’ve done a really great job of taking care of our community, and I think we’ve done it through member experience and the technology stack that we’ve continued to improve upon every year. And so I’m really excited for our conversion over for a new core banking system, which is why we’re here today, and online banking provider just another step in the right direction for our credit union
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, and just so as a wordsmith, when you say we’re small, but we’re thriving, small and we’re thriving
Nathan Grossenbach
And we’re thriving, that’s fair and we’re thriving
Sarah Cooke
There’s no reason small credit unions can thrive and survive absolutely especially with partners that can help them out. Denny, go for it your turn.
Denny Howell
Yeah. My name is Denny Howell, again, repeat offender, right? But been in the credit union industry since 1995 we started Mahalo in 2018. Mahalo is a digital banking company that’s really here to help credit unions of all asset sizes. Like you said, it’s not just large asset size credit unions that can and will be successful. It is anybody who really wants to be successful, right? So we’re here just to help them, help their members. It’s been a great partnerships.
Sarah Cooke
Yep. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, and thank you for your time. Nathan, first question is going to go to you. So what were you looking for in a mobile banking provider that you weren’t getting from your previous provider, I assume you had a previous provider.
Nathan Grossenbach
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, we did. And you know, honestly, we’ve been very pleased with technology that we’ve had for many years, and it’s just that next generation of options that our members need we continually want to serve. I think we have two distinct membership groups. We have traditional members that have been with us since the 1950s and 50s, and we have this new age of memberships that are where we’re growing into more of the cities in the urban area. And so we needed to find a provider that could serve both sides. So a good, easy, simple feel I get in there I know exactly where I’m going to go, combined with the technology that maybe the new groups of memberships that we’re going for are really looking for things like ability to transfer out and budgeting and having more built into the system that they can access. And so for us, you know, we’re looking at several different providers, and mahalo clearly shined above the rest of them, to be able to provide from both aspects.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, that’s awesome, because a lot of I was reading a survey the other day that younger members Gen Z and millennials are particularly the ones who are into the advanced budgeting tools. So that’s that’s really awesome, obviously, because credit unions need to get those younger members in the door. For sure
Nathan Grossenbach
they do. And, you know, I was surprised. I’m going into it. We thought the same thing. And then we started hearing I listed feedback from a membership, and I’m finding out that those have been here for 40 to 50 years, they, too were saying, we need more we need more features. We need more service. I want to do this at nine o’clock at night. So, you know, I typically that’s what you think, but it is widespread. Every member was looking for
Sarah Cooke
it. Okay, so were there any particular features that drew you to Mahalo?
Nathan Grossenbach
Yeah. Well, I think just off the bat, the integration into the new core that we’re looking for is huge. The amount of things that we don’t need to have a manual process for the technology that’s there to automate, things such as external transfers, the budgeting software is big for us. This is not a solution that we’ve been able to offer in the past. And the third part that comes with that is the ability to aggregate our accounts into the online banking platform. We’ve tried it with a standalone product before, where our members had to go out and enroll in it, and they added all their, you know, their credit cards and their other bank accounts to bring transaction history in. That was really clunky. And we see the Mahalo platform and how easy it is to do it. I think that’s going to be huge for our mission of supporting the financial success of our members and Shoreline, we know, although we’d like to think we have their entire relationship, we don’t. And so their ability to bring the full picture in to one spot and have access to that and one good, exportable spot or one reviewable spot, is critical for us. Yeah,
Sarah Cooke
yeah. And so, love, love. Those explanations. Denny, what do you think? Think makes mahalo stand out. What are you hearing from credit unions when you’re talking
Denny Howell
to them? You know, we do. We actually get this question quite often. And honestly, the truth is, it’s a lot of things. It’s not just one thing that makes Mahalo stand out. You know, when a credit union is looking at our solution, they meet our team, and then they recognize that deep credit union experience that we have, both from Mahalo and our staff, you know, a shift happens, right? Really, after speaking with our existing clients, they fully grasp the, you know, the depth of completeness of our platform. You know, likely, Nathan was saying it’s, we don’t have to credit unions aren’t having to go out and get third party solutions for all these other ancillary products. You know, we’re building those into our platform for them. So really, the platform is extremely complete for them. They, you know, they soon realize we’re just not another digital banking provider, you know, we’re, I think we’re something a little bit entirely different. I think that difference matters, you know, in the space that we’re in right now. And of
Sarah Cooke
course, creating efficiencies right now for credit unions is huge, huge now. Danny, last time you were wrong with me, we talked about your mindful banking, I think is what you called it, yeah. Thoughtful banking, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Very, very, you know, Inclusive. Inclusive, not only for older versus younger, you know, users, but also people who have disabilities and stuff that. I mean, I think that was very thoughtful. In fact,
Denny Howell
again, it’s something that you know, credit unions are member centric, and if 15 to 20% of their members can engage with them, there’s a loss there for them, right? They’re not getting into that environment. So by building something that every member can get in and use, you want to see that be 100% inclusive,
Sarah Cooke
absolutely. And my left handed daughter, thanks. You too. So start with Nathan, but both of you are welcome to jump in on this one. So Shoreline is a relatively small credit union, as you know, noted at 130 913 9 million. Is mobile banking more important for y’all than you think your credit unions?
Nathan Grossenbach
That’s a good question. I started here in 2013 and the measurement that was always provided the board was number branch transactions that we did. And I remember we topped out about 20,000 across our three branches. And we thought, well, this is crazy. And as time went on, that number went to 1816, 14, 13,000 the board of directors took a step back, and they’re like, Well, is this bad? And so we had to look at a whole new data set, and it’s well, let’s look at everything. Let’s look at debit card, credit card, online banking, Ach, and we found out that we have almost 300,000 transactions or touch points with our membership per month, and so much more of it is done via digital so can I say it’s more important than a big credit union or even a smaller credit union than us? I don’t know if it’s more important, but I can tell you that having a good solution helps us compete. And when members come in and they’re looking for a new financial institution, we can say we got better rates than the others, and we have same or in many cases, superior technology. It’s a win win, because they know when they’re walking in, they’re going to be called Mark and Stacy, they’re not going to be called Hi. How can I see you today or help you today? They’re they’re given basically the whole suite of a small credit union experience with the with the big technology. No
Sarah Cooke
Realizer, for sure, are you seeing that around how? Denny, yeah. And I
Denny Howell
definitely agree with Nathan. I don’t think it’s that it’s more important for smaller credit unions. I think everybody understands just how vital it is across the board right now, right? I think what’s critical, though, is ensuring that the smaller credit unions have equal access to the same advanced features that larger credit unions have. You know, with those technology partners, that’s the important thing with what we do, is we make sure we deliver that same high level functionality to every credit union we serve, whether it’s a $40 million asset credit union or credit unions 4 billion in assets. Every one of those members are equally important to us, so every member of every size asset credit union should really get that digital banking experience they expect and especially they deserve as well.
Sarah Cooke
Absolutely, technology is a great, great equalizer, right? Yeah. So, so, Nathan, I noticed you also offer business banking, which not a lot of credit unions do, many but not you know less than half for sure. Does that affect your digital banking choice?
Nathan Grossenbach
Yeah, actually, it really did. We didn’t go into it thinking it would, but it was one of those things you didn’t realize how how much better it can be. I’ll go from that direction, how much better it can be with another provider, something as simple as having the QuickBooks integration, we have lost. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but we’ve lost probably 20 members over the last year because we didn’t have that integration. And it was not something we knew going into it that this would be a big part of it, but once we saw that, at least mahalo can offer it, this was an easy add on for us to purchase. And being able to tell members that came to me and said, Hey, why don’t you have this yet? Give us nine months. We’re almost there. Guys, hold on tight. And it’s been the difference maker. They have said we can do that. We can do the manual process for a little bit, because you do offer all these other services to it. So that part is really nice. And then the second part too. I don’t know how much this will resonate with others, but the core we’re on right now. Was member number specific. So every membership number has its own login to online banking, and with Mahalo, it’s more social security number centric. So because of that, our members will be able to see in a more a better place, my personal account, my retirement account, my business accounts, associated than we have right now, which right now requires many members to have 567, different sets of logins with very minimal capabilities to transact between multiple membership numbers. That won’t be an issue with Mahalo as well. So yeah, it turned into a really big thing that we didn’t even realize was a problem before we started the search.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, yeah. When we started my business, I had to actually go to the bank across town rather than Mike’s credit union. They didn’t even offer banking services at all, sure, but yeah, I mean quick who doesn’t use QuickBooks? It’s definitely important. Know that
Denny Howell
centric system is what’s really important, right? It’s everybody has enough problems right now remembering one login, you know, username and password, let alone five or six if they got to get into it. So let’s make it easy. Give them everything they have at the credit union they can union, they can see their entire relationship. One Login, everything’s right there.
Sarah Cooke
And that’s the thing. Also at my the bank that I had used before I moved down here to South Carolina, two separate apps for my banking, Business Banking, and personal checking. So yeah, it was, it was, yeah, no, it was not, well, obviously, you’re solving for that problem. Basically, that’s the words I’m going for. So, so Nathan, what’s keeping you and your peers up at night as it comes to mobile offerings?
Nathan Grossenbach
Yeah, well, you know, I feel a lot better about it now it was increasingly, we were in a long contract, and so you could kind of see as time went on, just the competitiveness wasn’t there when we first signed on, and we were ecstatic as a big upgrade. So you know, a lot of that is, I trust that mahalo is going to keep up with the business better than our prior provider would. I think their roadmap and what they’ve shown about what they’ve done since we began talking it was about January of this last year, the enhancements they’ve made, the roadmap they have, and how they engage with their customer base. That helps me feel a lot better that mahalo is going to be able to keep up and they’re listening to their customers, and that they will adapt as needed as well. So I feel I’m in a really good spot right now. I can’t say I’m stressed.
Sarah Cooke
So Danny, what’s on that roadmap? Where are we going next?
Denny Howell
I mean, we have just about everything on that roadmap. I mean, just in general alone, you know, mahalo completed 211 new features or upgrades to our platform in 2024 so it just goes to show you the the level of, you know, development we do for our credit unions, you know, to kind of listen to them, what’s in the what’s going on in the marketplace, what’s going on right now that we need to look at. So we’ve created a really nice open ecosystem where our credit unions can talk to each other. You know, they work with projects together. It’s just nice having that kind of camaraderie between not just Mahalo, but you know, all of our credit union partners
Sarah Cooke
as well. How do you set up that camaraderie? Is there a way that you facilitate that? I
Denny Howell
mean, we have a forum where all of our credit unions can kind of talk to each other about projects they have. What’s going on about our releases? What do they want to do together? So again, it’s just really been able to create that open ecosystem where, let’s let them all talk. I mean, that’s where great, great things come from, right? To a lot of people putting in ideas. And you take all these ideas, and you whittle them down to, you know, something that you can really work with and kind of develop for our credit unions. And that’s just kind of
Sarah Cooke
what we do here. Yeah, yeah, no. I’m going to start this question with Denny, but I want you also, Nathan. I want your input on it as well. What makes or breaks mobile banking when you’re dealing when you’re trying to attract Gen Z and Millennials and keep them, you know,
Denny Howell
I think to me, it’s always kind of struck me odd that I think they put Gen Z’s and millennials, they’re often treated like they’re some exclusive, hard to reach demographic. I don’t really think they are. I mean, to us, I think it’s pretty straightforward. I think they expect a mobile experience that’s fast, that’s intuitive, it’s easy to use, it’s not complicated. Yet we see solutions that continually add layers and layers upon complexity, complexity. Sorry, I can’t talk right now under those associations, you know, to that more equals better, right? And but it’s not more is not always better. I mean, if you look at Tiktok in popularity, it comes from being direct and effortless, right, hollow. Our missions to make members needs that simple, right? Not unnecessary, not, you know, not unnecessary complexity. Sorry
Sarah Cooke
about that. As a Gen Xer, I’m glad you said millennials aren’t special, but that’s okay. We’re always ignored anyway. Nathan, how about you? What do you think is breaks it for your younger members, well
Nathan Grossenbach
as an older millennial myself, I’m highly offended, but no, I you know, honestly, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s the usability part of it. No, we obviously don’t have the product in our hand yet, but what we’ve seen from the demos is it’s much more customizable than our current solution is. For me, what’s important to me, it’s my site, my savings and my checking account, but others, it might be their HSA or their mortgage loan or their credit. Card that they have, or maybe they don’t even want to see their accounts. They want to see travel notices, and they want to see other things that pop up. So it’s much more in the hands of not only the credit union to design an interface that looks well, the members also have much greater control of it too, so they can see what they want to see when they first pop it up. Right now, when you pop it up on our current app, it’s very static. There’s a couple links that you can go to and you got to click. And you gotta click about two or three times before you can see an account balance that doesn’t work. And, you know, we have people that ask, like, can I just, like, touch the app and my balance shows up? Because there’s a competitor down the road that does that. And honestly, off the top of my head, I can’t remember if mahalo does or not, but just one of those things, like, just crazy to me, to think that you want it that easy, where anybody can touch that button on your phone you see your balance. But there you go. That’s a need. And Nathan,
Denny Howell
your members will get quick balance functionality, quick balance there you go. Quick balance functionality. They even get to see the last five transactions that triggered on that account, not just the balances. So that was not a plan. Segue, that’s a great leap of faith there. Yeah,
Sarah Cooke
way to guess. So we’re gonna move on to that part of the interview where I always give my guests their final thoughts. They get to leave choose what their last words they leave our cardiac executive audience with Nathan. I’m gonna go with you. Okay,
Nathan Grossenbach
yeah, that’s cool. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to not stop looking honestly. A year ago today, we were heading to, well, I’m sorry, 11 months ago today, we are heading to the headquarters of our current core, and we had every intention of resigning and just just going with it. We were happy with it, and for whatever reason, little bug in the back of our head. So let’s just start looking at different options. And through that process, we were completely revamping our entire stack. But you don’t know what’s out there. It changes so quickly. I mean, you mentioned you started in 2018 it’s crazy to me to think that the integrations you have, the service you have, the customer base that you have, has all happened within our contract period with that core. And I’m super happy that we looked nothing bad to say about our existing provider. They’ve been great to us. It’s just the world changes very quickly, and I’m glad that we went into it
Sarah Cooke
with an open mind. Yeah. We’ll have to do an episode on Chorus one time. Yeah. Danny, your final
Denny Howell
thoughts, no. I mean, you know, like everything you know, I you know. Thank Nathan offhand, for you know, bringing us in and listening to us and kind of seeing what we have and working with us. To me, better is not or bigger is not always better. Like he said, You You got to look you got to do your research. You got to dig in there. Talk to other credit unions. See what other people are asking about. You know, talk when you’re talking to providers, have every one of their, you know, credit unions be on that list. So you can call every single one of them. That’s an important thing to me, not hand picking. You know, who I want my credit union, you know, credit union I’m talking to, to talk to, to talk to on my side, our entire credit union partner list is wide open for all of our credit unions to talk to. So again, I just take your time, make sure you’re, you know, looking at things for the right decisions. You know, look for something that is all encompassing, where you’re not having to buy or get, like four or 567, different third party solutions to come in to build a single platform. Yeah, I just, that’s all I got. I mean, I just think, you know, your time, you know, and go through that process, yeah,
Sarah Cooke
absolutely. That’s one of the reasons we started the credit union connection. We don’t want credit unions picking just who has the biggest marketing budget, right? Yeah, that’s for sure. Well, thank you for your time, gentlemen. I appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day.