“It’s only going to get worse.” The line is not meant to provoke fear. It reflects a growing contradiction credit unions are already feeling. Jobs remain steady, yet more members are falling behind. That tension sets the tone for this timely conversation on The Credit Union Connection and immediately reframes how leaders should be thinking about risk, collections, and member support.
Sarah Snell Cooke opens the discussion with a sense of urgency that feels earned. Costs continue to rise, auto payments are stretching budgets thin, and delinquencies are no longer isolated to familiar segments of the portfolio. As Kris Bishop shares what he is seeing across the industry, it becomes clear this is not a temporary fluctuation but a broader shift taking shape.
What resonates after watching is how quickly the conversation moves beyond metrics. Collections are framed not as a cold operational function but as one of the most sensitive moments in a member relationship. Kris explains how automation, when applied thoughtfully, can reduce friction, improve timing, and give members more control over how and when they engage.
There is also a current of cautious optimism. Credit unions hold a depth of data that few industries can match. When used with intention, that insight can surface issues earlier, guide more human outreach, and help institutions respond before financial strain becomes loss. The discussion does not offer easy answers, but it makes clear that credit unions have more agency in this moment than they might expect.
NOTE: The below AI-generated transcript to the video might not be 100% right, but are any of us really?
Sarah Cooke
Alright, cool. So hello, everybody. Welcome. I am Sarah Snell Cooke, of course, your host here at The Credit Union Connection, and I have today with me. Kris Bishop, welcome. Thank you. And as you can see, Kris is from FIntegrate. Why don’t you tell us a little more about yourself and the organization well.
Kris Bishop
So I’ve been in banking and credit union technology field for about 22 years. I’ve had four separate companies we’ve started in Seoul that really focused on data access and integration for credit unions and finance institutions over that time. So FIntegrate was acquired four years ago, and our focus is on the collections and recovery and the automation and integration that kind of evolves around anything to do with that that particular product.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, yeah, no, unfortunately, we had to reschedule this a few times. But this topic is so important. I didn’t I wanted to make sure I got it before the end of the year, because, I mean, we’ve seen the uptick in delinquencies. And so what are your forecasts for the coming year?
Kris Bishop
Oh, well, you know, it’s only going to get worse. Unfortunately, I think the coming year is predictive of what happened last year. You know, we saw rates increase in certain areas of delinquencies and in collections and recovery as much as 70% right like auto rates, I think, have gone through the roof with the subprimes that are really affecting credit unions right now, unfortunately, this economy is kind of a, maybe an anomaly, as far as the recession, or whatever they’re calling it now, right? It’s a jobless Normally, these types of financial economic issues are caused by joblessness, where that’s not the case here, right? We’ve had full, almost full employment, but it’s the pricing is going up. So delinquencies continue to rise, as does the cost of goods and services and the new car and car payments and that type of thing. So I hope that they get it in line quicker than they’re saying.
Sarah Cooke
Be nice, yeah, and I imagine too, like the DC area and other areas with major military or government concentrations had some serious issues going on. Are there pockets regions that you see that?
Kris Bishop
So, you know, I live in in Alabama, in Birmingham, up in north Alabama, I have a lot of friends that work in the defense sector in Huntsville, Alabama. Have some friends in DC and everything too. I think while we’re not seeing the numbers now, because, well, they don’t have the people working for the government to produce the numbers, I think we will see that impact in probably the first or the end of the fourth quarter, or the first of next year, because, I mean, they were out of work for 44 days, roughly, right? Like it’s about that again, yeah. So I think we’re going to see that as an impact. And especially if you’re already running thin, which a lot of people are with, their just their finances and their payments and then all of a sudden you’re missing a paycheck. It can be devastating.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, I think I read the most recent data I saw was 76% of people could up to 76% could be living paycheck to paycheck. That is three quarters of the United States. And you got to carry that over to your institution.
Kris Bishop
When you think, when you see the report that says the average car payment is almost $800 now, then you realize that’s, I mean, you miss you get behind. That’s a pretty big payment to be behind on, even if it is your car?
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, I was choked when I learned mine was going to be almost 600 Oh, but now it’s crazy. 800 is just average crazy. It’s crazy the cost of living and then the mortgages and the housing costs don’t even talk about that one.
Kris Bishop
Yeah, they’re saying the Fed is also maybe not going to have another reduction in interest rates before the end of the year, which previously, if we’d had this conversation a month ago, they were saying, hey, we’ll have another one by the end of the year. But now the latest indications are they’re not.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, yeah. Things are kind of crazy in Washington anyway. And I mean, I grew up in Maryland. I moved I just moved away from Maryland a year and a half ago. I very much got the DC vibe still, you know that? Yep. So, all right, well, that was kind of scary stuff.
Kris Bishop
I hate to be negative and start out, but that’s kind of the world we live in, right?
Sarah Cooke
That’s kind of where, yeah, exactly. So yeah, with the with the collections and delinquencies and whatnot. The there has to be a way. Credit Union aren’t great at them. Credit Unions. I mean, it’s not nobody. I heard somebody say nobody’s a collection. And enthusiast, which nobody wants to go to work in that area, right? And I mean it, I imagine it’s hard. I imagine it’s very hard. And one of the things you all are doing is making it easier to a degree, as far as, like the processing part. So talk a little talk a little bit about, what are the efficient efficiencies that can be gained there?
Kris Bishop
Well, and I think it’s not only the operational efficiencies, but it’s the member centric, member sensitive efficiencies. You know, credit unions are really good at being sensitive to their members, their needs and everything. That’s why they have a lot of the subprime auto loans, right? It was a member need, and they feel that now they’re having to balance kind of the stress of the economics with the actual strength of their portfolio, right? But automation, what we see is it really is and can be used to satisfy the both sides of the house, right? So we can identify delinquencies, potential delinquencies, earlier to notify the member. Hey, there might be a shortfall in your account this month or in your transactions, right? You had a an expected increase in some of your bills. Maybe you didn’t get a paycheck, or as much as you thought you were going to get. And so the automation can identify that through using our AI and our business logic. But also the CSRS can then either determine where they make a call and say, hey, you know what happened this month? Can we do some real personal workouts for you? Or they can determined not to bother them, because maybe they’ve, they’ve never been delinquent, maybe they’ve always paid, you know, their bills. And so we simply just shoot them a text, right? They send them an email that kind of meets the members where they are when they are with the click to pay is just Hey tonight when you’re sitting on yourself at 11 o’clock, if he wants to go and click or move some money over to pay the bills. So I really think if it’s designed and implemented right, automation is both an efficiency game, but also a huge member support, member service improvement.
Sarah Cooke
And one of the things too, as we were kind of mentioning, or I was mentioning earlier is how uncomfortable some of those situations must be to have that discussion.
Kris Bishop
But yeah, I mean, automation doesn’t have to feel I mean, this process certainly didn’t have to collections doesn’t have to feel impersonal, right? And you can do that by reaching out to the member where they are, when they are, and making it efficient and easy for them to pay. But then also, you know, maybe you have a conversation offline with them, and you better understand the situation, right? So then you can offer more, more benefit to them, as opposed to just a Pro Bowl call, right? That says, Hey, you’re late, click here to pay or whatever, right?
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, because yeah, I and when you’re not facing or listening to another person at the other end of the line, if you will, you don’t feel as judged, even if that a person isn’t judging you, is trying to help you.
Kris Bishop
But I mean, automation is not using technology to replace people. Automation really is using the people at their most effectiveness to be sensitive to the members needs to be more effective for the credit union and collecting maybe some larger some harder loans to work out some more complicated things. So automation is not about replacing the humans. It’s really about augmenting and perfecting what they’re good at, versus meeting the member with where they want to be met, right?
Sarah Cooke
And doing that even after hours, if that’s, you know, somebody works, you know, overnight shifts, they’re not going to be up at 8am in the morning or something like that, nor do they want to hear that phone call at 8am in the morning, right?
Kris Bishop
I think a lot of people are like, like myself. They work their job all day, then they come home at night and after dinner and kind of chillax in there, they’d get on their phone and maybe start paying a few bills or taking care of some of the loose ends that they didn’t do during the day.
Sarah Cooke
Which I will be doing tonight. I Yeah. And so there’s also, do you all also do, like auto repossessions and things like that too, we do.
Kris Bishop
So our product is fusion CRS. And so we start with kind of what we call the pre delinquency risk scoring or analytics, and go all the way through to charge off financial accounting. We have a shadow accounting system built in for charge offs and how to reply that back to the credit union’s books to help them lower their loan loss reserves. But then we have the collections module for the charge offs and the workout. And that type of thing. We have several different modules that handle the different types of loan, you know, from bankruptcies to different types of bankruptcies, to the complete charge off to asset recovery, the expenses associated with that. So everything doesn’t just get lumped into one big charge off bucket, right? Because you’ve got expenses, you’ve got the assets, you’ve got interest increases, different levers you can pull to benefit the credit union, while also, you know, taking care of business on the actual asset side of the house. And that’s interesting.
Sarah Cooke
It’s distinguished, I guess, each type alone is weighted too as far as like, how you’re whether it’s collateralized or not, and how you’re going to, you know, make that collection. Because I imagine some of the collections that are like personal loans and credit cards and things like that, it’s hard to make that back up. I assume, if it does truly go to charge off.
Kris Bishop
It probably it could be in some cases, but you think about an overdraft, I mean, a member, a shared draft, it’s also a type of loan, right? So if you overdraw your account, but then you have those that are larger, even some commercial loans, right? They have tons of collateral and data there. But, yeah, credit unions have lots of different types of loans, and just depending on the type of loan and where it is and how it’s written up.
Sarah Cooke
So, and these, you mentioned predictive analytics. How do those work? Like what goes into that as far as determining.
Kris Bishop
So today, we take in 21 different data feeds or data points from the core. We have what we call a deep core integration. So depending on the type of core we can pull out all kinds of information, historical, even live. You know, credit card, debit card feeds and transactions from the customer account. But there’s 21 different weighted categories that we go through with the credit union to determine what their comfort level is in making these weights to do the predictive analytics. So we’ve gotten pretty good, especially with given good data to take it in, you know, updated credit scores, updated transactions, things like that, to do on a nightly basis. The predictive analytics, as we move more towards the AI world and the AI model, all of this will be like on steroids, and also more of a real time environment. A lot of guys say they are there right now, but which would kind of scare me if they are, depending on how quickly the AI world changes, but more also for security and compliance reasoning, we’re moving there cautiously. So what we have today is machine learning with we interface with some chat bots and things that some of our customers have that are AI driven, but we don’t have aI natively built into our product yet. We expect something probably the second quarter of next year.
Sarah Cooke
So definitely moving that direction, which it sounds like everybody is.
Kris Bishop
That’s where all the cool kids want to play right now, me too, right?
Sarah Cooke
Like, yeah, oh, especially when I try to get chat GPT to tell me a joke or something, they’re so bad. Yeah. So any anything else new coming in the in the coming year, whether that’s something FIntegrate is doing or, you know, a trend that we should be looking for the cranial leaders should be looking for?
Kris Bishop
You know, I mean, from a company perspective, we’re, we are excited about building newer products around the AI platform, right around some type of AI we’ve got, we’ve already we’re using AI today with some of our coding, some more in house stuff. So we’re really excited about what all we can do for our customers to make their journey easier, to make their insight into the data and the financials. We have dashboards today for the executive drive so they can kind of trend where their money is going by asset type, or by loan right, workout types, that thing stuff compared to last month, last quarter, last year, which is good, but it would be really cool if they could just kind of speak to the product and have it perform these analytics about regions or assets based on what their particular bottle of their books look like, things like that. So we’re really kind of geeking out on some of the data plays that we have, and really excited about where we’re going with that. With ours being hosted or on prem, we kind of have the best of both worlds, so we can put it inside a secure container at the client site, right, and not have to worry as much about the security and compliances if it’s something is hosted. And we interface with an AI over here and a credit card platform over there and a chatbot over here. So that’s exciting piece. You know, trend wise, we have a dispute product as well that tracks and handles from intake through resolution reporting different types of transactional disputes, credit card disputes, debit. Hard disputes, check fraud disputes, so we’re always watching those trends as an industry. But also, how do we better help identify those for the credit unions and community banks in the world? Right? So how do we help them identify those up front and integrate that in and how does that really pertain to the delinquency. So we’re starting to really trend some data from the fraud and the patterns there as it relates to the increase in delinquencies to help maybe better predict what’s going to be a late fee. Maybe it’s not a true fraudulent transaction, but it ends up turning into a delinquency, or a delinquent transaction in late fees.
Sarah Cooke
Wow. Okay. I appreciate your expertise. Today I’m gonna, I always allow my guests to have final thoughts. So Kris, what would you like to leave our credit union audience with?
Kris Bishop
So I think one of the things that keeps coming up in this, this last week or two, in conversations, and I’m finally excited to that our bankers are understanding that they have a treasure trove of data, and they have more valuable data than probably even Google, right? Because they have all your historical transactions. They have all your or Amazon, I should said, you know, they have all this, this data on their customers, and now, with the advent of some of these tools, like we’re talking about this in our fusion products, or that that’s available to some and different analytics, they can really start to use their knowledge and their banking expertise to really garner some insight into the financials of each of their members and then offer products and services, or maybe just a simple communication, right? It doesn’t have to be so when they a new product, it could just simply be a communication in an effective way to their members. And I think that’s what’s exciting to us, is just do a better job of what we’ve always done, and we’ve always had the data, but we’re just doing a better job at now, using it to support the members, and we’re using it to not only help the credit union support the members, but to help the credit unions see their business better, look at the financials better, and reduce fraud, reduce their expenses overall.
Sarah Cooke
Very strategic moves that credit union leaders need to be looking at and making appreciate your time today, Kris, you have a great Thanksgiving. Bye.