In this episode of The Eltropy Exchange, Michael Pupil sits down with Jason Johnson, Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Project Management at KEMBA Financial Credit Union. Jason shares his early career journey and the distinct ethical difference he found when returning to the credit union movement. He explains how KEMBA prioritizes serving the member and community first, using sales numbers as a measurement of how they're impacting the community.

Jason unpacks KEMBA’s strategic approach to technology, including their full deployment of Interactive Teller Machines (ITMs), which allows for expanded drive-through hours from 8 to 6 to 7 to 7. He discusses how this strategy helps serve members in previously ”underserved areas”. Crucially, he details the successful strategy of converting indirect loan members into fully engaged, multi-product members by offering a rate reduction via their relationship pricing model. This resulted in a 40% checking penetration and 37% increase in overall average share deposits from that portfolio. Finally, Jason discusses KEMBA's thoughtful approach to AI, emphasizing the need for very clear and defined use cases and the challenge of maintaining the ”small credit union” identity while benefiting from efficiencies.