It’s no secret that the financial industry is becoming increasingly competitive, especially with the rise of digital banking and other nontraditional providers. To personalize member engagement and offer the products and services today’s consumers expect, Duke University Federal Credit Union (Durham, N.C., $194 million) knew it had to continue to find solutions for growth.
“In order to stay relevant,” said Daniel Berry, president/CEO of Duke University FCU, “we knew we had to grow our membership but also to grow the relationships within our membership. We asked how we
can serve our members better today than we did yesterday.”
Traditionally, credit unions are “known” for cultivating personalized relationships with their members, but fewer in-person interchanges create challenges. How can credit unions keep and even deepen the relationships they have with members in a progressively digital world? Given the flood of messages and offers bombarding American consumers nowadays, how can a credit union attract the attention of its members to its products and services?
Blasting generic messages to the entire membership is not typically effective and certainly does not give members the impression their credit union knows them and cares about their individual needs and situations. Instead, the goal is to target the right members at the right time with the right offer.
Increasingly, businesses across all industries are using AI to identify and personalize marketing campaigns. In the financial sector, a member’s financial behaviors and transactions can add to the story of who a person is. But many credit unions do not have the resources or expertise to develop a robust and effective AI program to gain these insights from their existing data.
Over the past year, Duke University has partnered with Vertice AI to identify and execute growth opportunities. Intaking member data the credit union already has, the Solution continually analyzes data to deliver actionable, member-specific product and service recommendations to provide the marketing team with opportunities for targeted campaigns. The focus of the solution is to deepen the relationship with existing members and increase the effectiveness of marketing and engagement resources. To put it simply, Vertice AI enables credit unions to identify who is most likely to need what.
Beyond sharpening marketing campaigns, Vertice AI also allows a credit union to identify and understand how members are growing or contracting, also known as churning, so that strategies can be adjusted to increase growth success or make corrections when churn is happening. To support these strategic adjustments, Vertice Solution calculates the Summit Rate, a proprietary Vertice AI metric, which measures member economic participation growth changes over time.
In the last 12 months, Duke University FCU experienced a Summit Rate of 1.12 percent, indicating that member participation grew by a net 1.12 percent when comparing members who increased participation and those who decreased during this time period. Contributing to this participation growth is a 2.5 percent increase in the average number of products per member and 11.2 percent asset increase for this group of members.
Based on insights provided in the Solution, Duke University FCU executed two deposit/ share growth campaigns and four loan growth campaigns. The campaigns targeted 9,758 members, or 63 percent of the credit union’s membership. The credit union experienced 210 percent higher average account conversion compared to non-targeted members. There were more than 160 new accounts opened, which was 10 percent of the total new account openings in 2024. The campaigns collectively delivered $1.65 million in balance growth for Duke University FCU, with $1.2 million coming from loan balance growth and $450,000 coming from deposit balance growth.
• 2.5% Growth in Avg. Number of Products per Member.
• 11.2% Growth in Avg. Assets per Member
“In order to stay relevant we knew we had to grow our membership but also to grow the relationships within our membership. We asked how we can serve our members better today than we did yesterday.”