If your credit union is dropping a fortune on flashy new tech while wondering why member engagement still feels like pulling teeth, we need a heart-to-heart.
In this episode of The Credit Union Connection, podcast, host Sarah Snell Cooke discusses the future of the movement with Nenuca Syquia, CEO of BOxD. According to early findings from BOxD’s ongoing survey, the top two culprits holding the industry back aren’t strict regulations, but change-averse cultures and outdated internal policies.
We love a good automation tool or AI upgrade, but as Syquia points out, technology is just a seed. If the organizational soil—meaning the humans from the front line to the boardroom—isn’t fertile, those expensive investments will never bear fruit. Choosing to stand still while the rest of the world speeds up isn’t playing it safe; it’s an existential risk.
Too many credit unions suffer from mission drift, trying to be a “cheaper bank” instead of leaning into purpose-driven building. Fixing that requires embracing discomfort and having tough conversations out loud rather than whispering about them in the conference hallway.
With AI handling tedious paperwork, staff finally have the breathing room to do what credit unions do best: build human connections. Catch the full episode to hear the early survey data and learn how to start changing hearts, minds, and internal soil before the train leaves the station!
NOTE: This transcript may contain minor imperfections courtesy of our AI overlords-in-training. We’re not complaining. We’re definitely not complaining.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Hello and welcome everyone. I am, of course, Sarah Snell Cooke, your host here at the Credit Union Connection. I’m joined today with Nanuka Sakía. Welcome.
Nenuca Syquia: Thank you, Sarah. I’m so happy to be here, and you nailed my last name, which by the way, nobody even tries to attempt. Most of the time.
Sarah Snell Cooke: As a recovering reporter who always made sure I spelled things right, now I gotta make sure I pronounce things right. So you are the CEO at BOxD, which I love the company name because it means what?
Nenuca Syquia: Better organizations by design, not wishful thinking, or let this be the magic bullet. It is evolution, getting better with a plan in mind by design.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah, and that sounds a lot like what credit unions might need, because we all could use a little kick in the pants once in a while. And tell me about where this idea came from, ’cause you all are doing this survey as well as some small group interviews that I sat through. That was a lot of fun.
Nenuca Syquia: And I heard your session, Sarah. It was, like, bubbling. There were so many ideas coming across, and you all could have talked for hours and hours.
Sarah Snell Cooke: I’ve been in the industry 27 years I think it is now, and, so had some of the others around the same time, so yeah, we could talk all day long. So yeah, tell me about the concept behind it. Yeah. Why did this? What was the idea behind this?
Nenuca Syquia: Okay, I’ll start with first, I love credit unions in general. I think they’re the original business with a purpose because it’s not just about making a profit for the unnamed executives who are sitting in a secret room. Nope, it is actually going back to the members, and it’s about building community. So BOxD, we do a lot of work with purpose-driven companies in that sense. Anyway, for the future of credit unions, that specific work was actually born out of a conference that I was attending, and the focus of the conference was growth and innovation. So I was expecting that we’d be having very meaty, even challenging or painful conversations about what needs to change for the industry to continue growing, and for more people to find out about this wonderful thing that is so easily accessible, but I feel like most people don’t know about. And what I heard and what I observed at the conference was a lot of the same, I call them well-loved paths being walked, which was, “If we just lean into our purpose more, people will love it,” or, “If we just build the right products, people will come,” “They’ll find us one way or the other. We just need to innovate the member experience and we just need to buy the technology to make that happen.” And I found myself feeling concerned, because again, I love credit unions so much, and I was like, “Oh, no, if this is the path that we keep walking down all together, I don’t know how” there will be actual evolution. ‘Cause I do think of upgrades in technology, I think of those as seeds. My team has heard me use this analogy so many times. I think of those as seeds of investment and we’re planting them in the ground, hoping that they will bear fruit and bring the membership base that we are expecting. But if that soil itself is not fertile, which is the credit unions as organizations themselves, it’s the humans who are running this, if that is not fertile, those seeds will never themselves bear fruit. And so I wanted to work on this project where I think it’s time for credit unions to take a look at themselves, not their tech stack, not necessarily their product portfolio, to say, “What kind of soil conditions do we actually need to have for any of these investments to actually take root and bear fruit?” That’s where it came from.
Sarah Snell Cooke: And I think what’s so important, and people may miss sometimes, is introducing a new technology is wonderful, and that part needs to be done. I know you’re not getting paid not to do it.
Nenuca Syquia: Yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: But just making sure that people who are gonna be using it, involving them in the process, involving them in getting them trained up, all the things, like, that lay that foundation. So then, my world in branding, that’s what you gotta lay all that foundational work first before you can put that brand out there. And Lord knows credit unions need people to know what they even are and
Nenuca Syquia: Yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: how to use them. Yeah. And
Nenuca Syquia: you talk about brands here. I wanna just build on what you just talked about. This is something I also did hear at that same conference, where there is a need, again, for more people to find out about credit unions and for them to have a more unique brand, both credit unions as a whole and each distinct credit union having its own distinct brand. What we don’t want to happen is that those brands are very different from the internal expression of that. Meaning, it looks really glossy and good on paper, and the website is super snazzy, but if, again, it doesn’t translate into how people actually operate from a day-to-day basis and how they themselves function as an organization, that brand feels inauthentic.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Absolutely.
Nenuca Syquia: The people really make all the difference, whether it’s in terms of innovation or in brand authenticity and really nailing that member experience.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah. You gotta force your people to drink that Kool-Aid.
Nenuca Syquia: Maybe we shouldn’t use that analogy, Sarah. Sorry. But I get what you’re going with it. But it’s
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah.
Nenuca Syquia: having it ring true on both sides. Your outward face is the same as your inside face.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Exactly, yep. And everybody knows it. Everybody knows, like, if an employees are empowered to do things and, rather than restricted, always just restricting them from doing things. And, yes, making sure they get their BSA training, but also maybe some leadership development training, or
Nenuca Syquia: Yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: something along those lines that is not necessarily the hard skills, but the soft skills as well, that contribute to building that brand. How about that?
Nenuca Syquia: Yes, I completely agree, Sarah.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah, can you share some of the early findings that you have so far with this survey and the interviews?
Nenuca Syquia: Absolutely. So one of the questions, or actually it’s a set of questions, where we talk about what are the causes of friction in terms of what would allow credit unions to be able to grow. Surprisingly, the top two so far are having a very change-averse culture, and the second is having legacy technology and outdated policies.
Sarah Snell Cooke: For sure. And a lot of, sometimes not always, but I feel that, sometimes the legacy technology is the crutch sometimes to keep credit unions from evolving, ’cause if you want something to happen, you can make it freaking happen. And every culture can be change-averse, but, I feel like credit unions are more And I don’t know if you’ve seen that in your other consulting work, but yeah, talk a little bit about that and where you might think that might be coming from.
Nenuca Syquia: So I will say, as humans in general, we are averse to change, because if you think about it just from a survival mechanism, the uncertain could be dangerous. And so therefore, we do tend to prioritize the more familiar, and this is why in my book, Sarah, you were asking me about my book earlier, False Solutions, we do tend towards these familiar solutions because we’ve seen them tried and tried again. Versus doing something that is unknown, that’s very scary. So take that, as human beings alone already, we’re very change-averse. Then you add onto it the financial services industry as a whole tends to be also more change-averse. There are certain industries, because the consequences of failed experimentation are much higher, so healthcare is another one. There does tend to be a stronger natural aversion to change.
Sarah Snell Cooke: So the second part of that question. Do you where do you see it coming from?
Nenuca Syquia: You mean the change aversion?
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yes.
Nenuca Syquia: Where in the organizations that we see it most?
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah.
Nenuca Syquia: Or
Sarah Snell Cooke: That that could definitely be part of it, for sure. ‘Cause I’m thinking, I served on my board of directors at my credit union for 12 years, and fortunately, I had the pleasure, literal pleasure, of watching the board evolve over that time to where when I moved and they asked me to stay on as a board member, I felt comfortable leaving because I knew we had done the work. But that’s not always the case, as far as board members, as far as executives, and that relationship between them as well. That’s kinda my two cents on it a little bit. I know there’s much more complexity than that, but there’s a start.
Nenuca Syquia: I’m really glad you said that too, Sarah, because that’s actually something I’ve heard from many people in the credit union space, but I find that it’s not talked about in a public setting. I do think it is a shared thought that is not shared out loud. So the need for the boards themselves to evolve, I completely agree, and that is one of the findings, too, that in the early findings of the future of credit unions is that the boards themselves, I think maybe the incentives don’t necessarily line up with where the future of credit unions should be, and there is a little bit of conservatism coming from the top of avoiding that kind of change. But that is also true throughout the actual organizations themselves.
Sarah Snell Cooke: It sets the mood, if you will. It’s the dinner lighting. And I think, in reverse too, there are CEOs who will manage the board to a point that they don’t say anything, or feel like they can’t say anything. Or there’s the people who do it for the dinners or people you know, the social aspect of it. And yeah, I think it’s that relationship between the CEO or the executive team and the board needs to be more honest probably than it is today.
Nenuca Syquia: I have found, and not just working with credit unions, but with other industries too, and by the way, Boxed as a company, we’re very intentional about working across industries because we wanna bring learning from across.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah.
Nenuca Syquia: But I have noticed, I don’t have a scientific study on this, but I have noticed the change aversion is, I see a correlation with discomfort with conflict also. The companies and the industries that we are most likely to not enjoy change seem to be the same ones also that don’t enjoy conflict. And when you look at it, that’s not a crazy correlation because both of those require pretty significant discomfort, I would say, on behalf of the human beings who are involved in that situation. So to your point of perhaps needing to have hard conversations maybe between the CEO and the board, I can see how that doesn’t necessarily happen when sometimes the goal is to preserve harmony. And actually, one of my goals of this Future of Credit Unions initiative was to spark more conversation. So then people could look at these reports together and say, “How much of this rings true about who we are today?” That is purely its goal is to start a different kind of conversation.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Absolutely. And it is quite the conversation starter. I remember, actually, it was interesting, when I was doing the interview, I was shown the top five that you were just citing. And
Nenuca Syquia: The early ones, yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah, the last, the number five was regulation or compliance, something along those lines. And but that’s the first thing everybody complains about. That’s the first thing is it for now I’ll say complain, that’s not fair. It is a real concern. But that it’s not as important as basically getting the people in line.
Nenuca Syquia: I think also because regulation, it is harder to change in the sense that it’s not entirely something that a credit union can control. But we can control ourselves. We can control how we respond to these external forces. In no world can I imagine where a company can control all of the external forces that are touching. Oh, boy, I would love to lead a company where that would be the case, where I would have that luxury, but that’s not true. So I’m not surprised that the focus is more on the things that can be controlled, because of the way we’re asking the questions too. We’re actually eliciting, focusing on the things that they can control, and they realize that regulation, while it is so important, is not actually something they can control that much from a day-to-day. Although we can from a longer term influencing
Sarah Snell Cooke: strategy. Political perspective, for sure.
Nenuca Syquia: Yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Compliance is not the evildoer that we all usually hold up on pitchforks or whatever. So then, what are other little bits of data you are willing to share?
Nenuca Syquia: I think the other early theme that is coming up pretty strongly is a recognition that right now, maybe there might be a little bit of mission drift and questioning, who really is a credit union? What makes a credit union a credit union, beyond, of course, saying you are governed by this kind of charter? But really, what makes a credit union so dramatically different than a bank? And one of the things I did hear loud and clear is, in maybe perhaps trying to serve everybody, it’s diluting the identity of specific credit unions, and how do they get that back up, get that clearer and more unique so that when you are speaking as a credit union, you are speaking to a very specific kind of person who ends up becoming a member. That is something. But again, that takes courage to be able to do that. That takes being able to engage in potential conflict, because now you’re saying no to certain things to say yes to this. And it involves also a change.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Oh,
Nenuca Syquia: yeah. Saying, “We’re going to not do this for us to be able to do this.” Yeah. So it ties back to what we were talking about earlier about the change aversion.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah. For sure. And it’s difficult because, again, I work in marketing and PR, and so I find it’s difficult for people who are not in marketing and PR to understand that niching down, and that it’s actually better for the business. It doesn’t mean you don’t serve these people, but this is your focus of whatever that is. And I do feel like some of the smaller credit unions are actually really stronger, it might not be exactly the right word, but certainly more a piece of their community that people don’t want it to go away. And I think, too, with not having that industry brand or a concept of what a credit union is, they weren’t held to it by their members.
Nenuca Syquia: Mm-hmm.
Sarah Snell Cooke: And some of that is intentional. I know credit unions that don’t even hold, or their annual meeting is kind of a joke. We don’t want anybody else showing up. We’re just like, and that’s not what credit unions are about. They’re about discomfort. So yeah, I can see a lot of ways I feel like I’m yammering more than usual.
Nenuca Syquia: That was one of the topics, by the way, Sarah, that has been coming up in the study so far, which is what does it actually mean to engage members now? Because obviously all of us who are on the call, we’re all members of credit unions. And we’re like, how many of you have actually been to an annual meeting? How many have actually voted? And even I, the lover of credit unions, I myself have not done that because I don’t know, do I need to do that as a member? Will it actually materially change how my credit union is run? So that came up with what does it actually mean to engage members
Sarah Snell Cooke: differently?
Senuca Syquia: And
Sarah Snell Cooke: members are disengaged from the ownership aspect of credit unions I feel like. They don’t necessarily realize they’re owners, and some credit unions really lean into that. I’m certainly, I love credit unions. I sound like I’m a downer on them. I really do love them. I feel like they have the power to change the world, honestly. And they certainly change lives every day. But I think some of the merging, or not the merging necessarily, some credit unions have lost their way, as you were saying, mission drift. And some credit unions are digging in more. And so it really does get at that point of what does it mean to be a credit union? You’re not just a cheaper bank.
Nenuca Syquia: Yes. Someone on our brain trust said the shabby flabby bank. We’re like, “Exactly, that’s not what a credit union is.” I really do think, Sarah, credit unions are at a very prime opportune time, and which is why I wanted us to be able to do this work, because with AI here, there’s so much opportunity for credit unions, not just to catch up, but to change the game in terms of how they operate and how they serve their members. I think it’s prime. And also, in the age of AI, people are looking for more human connection, I’d say. Because there’s so much opportunity for automation, and I think credit unions are uniquely placed to be able to do that. And then I also think of this next generation that cares a lot about who they do business with. They want to vote with their dollars. So I do think credit unions have a prime opportunity to take advantage of this and leap forward.
Sarah Snell Cooke: And I always say, ’cause I’ve had clients that work on the efficiency side and stuff, and I always say that part isn’t sexy. It’s not the fun part, the member-facing part. But it certainly can contribute probably more than a chatbot or whatever to actually use automation to make your mortgage documentation go more smoothly, your business, especially business lending and other types of documentation necessary for business accounts and stuff.
Nenuca Syquia: Yes. Actually, I was at our credit union maybe two months ago because we had an issue with our account. We actually experienced some fraud, and our credit union was able to help us reverse that. But as I was sitting there in the branch and I was talking to the person who was helping me, I saw this other gentleman who was there, and he was just sitting at a chair chatting it up with the people that I’m hoping that automation is allowing them to then spend more time with this gentleman. But apparently, he comes in every week. He knows everybody at the credit union by name. They all know him, and clearly they knew his wife, and they knew his kids because they were asking him about them. And I was like, “Oh, this guy must come in pretty often.” And I think of how many more interactions would be possible if we could leverage AI for the other stuff. Like to your point, filling out those forms
Sarah Snell Cooke: and
Nenuca Syquia: pre-filling them out so that we don’t have to ask members to fill them out again and again.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yes. It’s like, “You already have my Social Security number,”
Nenuca Syquia: Yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: why do I need to do this again? So what is your hope for what you’re gonna do or hope that credit unions do with the results that you’re coming up with?
Nenuca Syquia: I said this earlier, I really hope, Sarah, it allows people to have different kinds of conversations. I know that sounds a little trite and maybe so simple, but I think, one, great things are not achieved by single individuals. So you could have one person in a credit union who has all that fire and has clarity of that vision of, “Here’s where we need to go,” but they’re not gonna get there by themselves. They’re going to need everybody else who’s at the credit union to make that happen. And how that happens is through conversation. Being able to see where people’s thinking is at right now, and then helping everybody evolve together to say, “Here’s actually where we could be going forward.” My second hope for this initiative that we’re doing is to make what is very uncertain feel clear. I think one of the things I realized at that conference that I told you, where I had this idea, was I get it. I get why it’s scary to take steps into the fog, because you can’t see where it’s going to end. But if we paint this picture that is so clear and so vivid, it gives something for people to walk to. You might decide to pivot as a credit union. That’s not the exact path we’re going to take, but we’ll go this way. But it at least gives the ability to step forward, even a few steps. Those are really my two hopes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah, and I find that, or I believe that not making change is the bigger risk, and how I don’t know how people don’t see that. I hate to be, like, a snob, but there is a bigger risk in not taking advantage of AI, of not getting into the stable coin or digital ledger, distributed ledger technology, things like that.
Nenuca Syquia: Yes.
Sarah Snell Cooke: There is a bigger risk in not doing it. Yes, you wanna do it safely and in compliance.
Nenuca Syquia: Of course. Yeah.
Sarah Snell Cooke: But yeah, not doing it is gonna be a bigger problem down the road, and I think there’s really also kinda unfair maybe, but it’s life, that so many things are being thrown at credit union executives right now as well as the boards, because of the revolution in technology. And it’s only gonna speed up faster and faster. I don’t know what I meant by that, or I know what I meant by that. I don’t know what I would expect you to do with that, but you’re welcome to feedback.
Senuca Syquia: I do think that people forget sometimes that choosing to not do anything, AKA standing still, is also a choice in itself. I do, and again, this is not specific only to credit unions. I’ve seen this across a lot of industries, the freezing because we don’t know, or we don’t want to make mistakes and maybe perhaps choose the wrong path. That is still a choice. To stand still is a choice. As the world evolves around you, I just don’t want people to be under the impression that, “Oh, we’re safe because we didn’t take that risk.” No, you’re actually taking a bigger risk, to your point by standing still as the world evolves around you. And I was talking to Kirk Ray of CU2.0 the other day, and we were talking about how AI is evolving so fast that the train is speeding up as it’s leaving the station. And if we stay behind on the station, that train just gets further and further away. And to catch up, we will have to be galloping at basically light speed to be able to catch up. And so choosing to stay still, that AI train and the technology evolution train, that just gets further and further away.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah. And there’s so many mergers right now. When I started in credit unions in ’99, there were like 12,000 credit unions. Now there’s 4,500. I don’t even think there’s that many anymore. And in part, that’s because they aren’t willing to move with the times, to change with the times. And so it’s really scary to me where this industry could be heading if we don’t change that attitude. How do you foresee changing minds and hearts?
Nenuca Syquia: Oh boy. It’s not easy, I’ll say that. So I also want to acknowledge the role of a leader, it is a difficult job because
Sarah Snell Cooke: you are trying to change other people’s minds and hearts, and then you are trying to also evolve perhaps your own. And if you think about it, the leaders are trying to change the systems that they are part of, the organizational system that they’re a part of, and they’re trying to change it for others and change themselves along the way. So one, how do we first start making progress in that in terms of starting to change hearts and minds? One, I think first is to recognize that everybody will have different reactions to change. People change reactions exist on a spectrum. There are some people who are like me, who are all about it, who get so excited that, for me, the uncertain is exciting. It’s like, ah, I don’t know what could be possible versus, ooh, I don’t know what’s out there. And then you have people who are much more motivated by certainty and safety. Being able to speak to that whole spectrum and not saying, “Oh, I’m only gonna talk to my employees who are very much excited about this change, and everybody else can just get on board.” I think one of the mistakes that leaders make when it comes to driving some kind of change is forgetting that they have had months, sometimes even years, to wrestle with this thought of, “Oh, should we merge or not? Should we rebrand or not? Should we change this part of the member experience, or should we do it this way?” They have been wrestling with this for so much longer, and then when they announce it to their people, they expect everybody to be excited because they’re thinking, “Oh, we already did all the thinking through. We have definitely identified this as the best path forward. Let’s get excited about this ’cause of what it can do for us,” without realizing people thinking it’s time to catch up. And you have people, again, who are on that spectrum. Maybe these people who are just hearing it for the first time, who are excited about it, they’re the ones who are gonna jump on board and be like, “Yes, this sounds awesome.” But you have people all the way here too, who are saying, “What the heck? You’re changing this credit union that I signed up to work for. You’re changing who we are. And that’s not who I necessarily want us to be.” We have to be able to address that whole spectrum and give people time to catch up with their thinking. Which is why, again, I want Future of Credit Unions initiative to start different conversations.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah. The conversation we had in our small group interview, it was shocking. Everybody agreed. There were two of us that don’t work inside credit unions. There were two of us that worked in credit unions, or one… Actually, the one guy had just left to join another company. And a lot, especially with younger employees at credit unions, they’ll jump to a business partner because they’ll be able to move faster and evolve and change and grow and, not just themselves, but also the company might move a little faster. So I think, taking a little bit of market discipline for credit unions and sprinkling it in here and there, not going crazy with it, because that, I don’t wanna ruin what makes credit unions great, but a little more forward thinking and, and again, there are those out there that are amazing, and I’m like shocked. “Oh, I didn’t even know that was possible,” kind of thing that I hear from credit union leaders. But that’s not the majority, and we really need to get on board. As the mergers happen, there will eventually could eventually, it could be the end of the industry, really, which is important to all of us, not just for livelihoods, but it’s important to our communities and
Nenuca Syquia: To our society, I agree.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah.
Nenuca Syquia: And it’s I don’t wanna live in a world without credit unions. That is why I started this initiative. I want credit unions to thrive.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah, and I really think we need to have those discussions like we had in that small group, but as a whole, as a larger, at conferences. And ’cause what we’re talking about is always the hallway conversation. It’s not the actual
Nenuca Syquia: exactly
Sarah Snell Cooke: on-stage conversation. And bringing, just because we criticize the industry doesn’t mean you hate it, doesn’t mean you, it means you care enough to speak up when you may not be popular.
Nenuca Syquia: Yes. I actually, speaking about care, Sarah, my interpretation too about the perhaps change aversion and the desire to minimize conflict, I actually do think that comes from a caring place from an individual perspective because I have found, maybe this is self-selection, these are the kinds of people I attract, I have yet to meet a jerk or a very self-centered person in the credit union space. I have yet to meet them. I’m sure they exist, but I have yet to meet them. And there is care for the other, and so I can see the not wanting to rock the boat as I wanna make sure that we’re all okay and we’re perhaps not hurting somebody’s feelings or engaging in something uncomfortable for somebody accidentally.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Yeah.
Nenuca Syquia: But to your point, I do think helping them reframe what does it mean to care about my credit union or about my team. Do I care enough to have these hard conversations? I think that’s a really powerful reframe for people.
Sarah Snell Cooke: Absolutely. Absolutely. we’ve gone over, but it’s been great. I always allow my guests to have final thoughts. What would you like to leave our credit union audience with today?
Nenuca Syquia: The final thought that I’d love to leave your audience with your credit union listeners is that all these investments in technology, other process changes. They will bear fruit if you are yourself are willing to experience that world differently.
Sarah Snell Cooke: So that means looking in the mirror and changing and evolving yourselves, keeping the best parts of what’s working today, and getting ready for the future. Awesome. Love it. Thank you so much, Nanuka. Appreciate it.
Nenuca Syquia: Thank you so much, Sarah.