From Seasonal Marketing to Timely Member Solutions at 3Rivers Federal Credit Union

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (00:11):

Welcome to the FIsionaries Podcast, I'm your host, Jim Marous. This is a special day, because this is one of our live interviews we are doing at Co:Lab 2025, sponsored by Alkami in Nashville, Tennessee. What a great location, the Gaylord Hotel.

Jim Marous (00:28):

I'm here today with Chad Gramling from 3Rivers Credit Union and you're from Fort Wayne. And what we're going to be discussing today is the importance of data, analytics and personalization in a financial institution. You're a rather modest size financial institution, how big is your organization?

Chad Gramling (00:49):

Today, we're about 2.5 billion, probably about 113, 114 members through a thousand members.

Jim Marous (00:57):

And how many branches?

Chad Gramling (00:58):

26.

Jim Marous (01:00):

And tell us a little bit about your background. It's interesting because you've been to 3Rivers for quite some time.

Chad Gramling (01:06):

I have. I have. As I like to say, I started in the late 1900s, 1999, fresh face out of college. Was just myself, a vice president of marketing and a part-time marketing clerk who did some basic reporting and supply orders. So, they said, "We need somebody to do some desktop publishing, some brochures, the typical traditional marketing stuff. Oh yeah, we have this little website, internet might be a thing I don't know, update that from time to time."

Chad Gramling (01:36):

And that quickly became the bulk of my job and later transitioned into a role specifically on web development and online banking. Turned out the internet was a thing and then I migrated into product management, implemented our first two mobile banking solutions and then moved more into the data side of the house.

Chad Gramling (02:02):

Just about the 20-year mark of my career, moved into business intelligence full-time and it's really been a wonderful, wonderful experience ever since.

Jim Marous (02:14):

It's interesting because your background is similar to what mine was. I started in the branch system, moved to the marketing area. Did marketing for finance institutions for about 10 years then worked on the supplier side and then it was a direct marketing agencies that only worked with financial institutions, but again, we were playing with data, trying to personalize messages.

Jim Marous (02:35):

Not a different, probably pretty much the same mission as we have today, but with a whole lot more tools today. So, during your more recent career path where you were working more with data and analytics, what's been the biggest change at 3Rivers with regard to how you use data, how you collect data and more importantly, how you deploy information and solutions against that data.

Chad Gramling (03:03):

Yeah, you're absolutely right, deploying that insight is the key there and I think in a lot of cases, the technology has caught up with the dream. And the dream was always to be more personal, to be more relevant, to be more timely, to speak directly to the consumer on the level that shows that you know them and that you understand them and you want to help them with their finances.

Chad Gramling (03:25):

Getting that achieved in a well-orchestrated manner was not always the easy method or not really the easy thing to accomplish. So, what has really changed though is there's an emphasis. We spawn out of marketing, as I said, I spent 20 years in marketing, then we formed a business intelligence group that actually spun out of marketing and went into IT.

Chad Gramling (03:53):

And then at around the same time, maybe a year later, our digital member experience group spawned out of marketing. So, what was once one consolidated marketing group turned into three. And today, now that we've had some years under our belt to develop on our own, grow, we're actually consolidating back together-

Jim Marous (04:13):

I was going to say is that an opportunity to challenge when you separated.

Chad Gramling (04:20):

I think some folks expected it, some of the folks that helped engineer that to happen. Our CEO especially I don't think at the time we understood that's what was going to happen. So, it was really neat to kind of forge a new path but then come back together and unify those synergies. And what we can do now is really take that to the next level and personalize the experience and to really, like I say, achieve the dream that we've had for a long time.

Jim Marous (04:48):

It's interesting because back when you separated units, I mean, I remember marketing, we used to have to claw at the IT department to give us information about the results of our programs. We'd have a choice between do you want your target audience or do you want the results of your previous program?

Jim Marous (05:07):

And we're building target audiences without a full deck of cards because you couldn't get the information in time. Having the people in the data area come out of marketing, you knew those challenges, you were able to actually work on behalf of marketing to that degree as well as other departments.

Jim Marous (05:25):

So, when you look at the deployment of data, the deployment of information at 3Rivers right now, have you expanded the realm of who's able to access the information, who's able to access the insights, who's able to access and actually deploy against those beyond just marketing?

Chad Gramling (05:46):

Yeah, there's a lot of directions I could take that question and the short answer is yes. For me, a real big imperative of having data is democratizing the data throughout the organization. That has always been-

Jim Marous (05:58):

Man, you're talking my language area. I love that.

Chad Gramling (06:01):

That has always been one of my strongest desires is, and so when we did build the business intelligence group, build a data warehouse, started funneling in other extracts and creating almost a consolidated, unified view of the consumer, we were able to actually then build the dashboards, deploy the dashboards to the organization to show, here's where you are trending on your production, here's opportunities that have come up, we want to get those more real time, more focused on those sorts of opportunities.

Chad Gramling (06:35):

We say opportunities because it's not so much product push but it's, here's something that's happening in the life of a consumer or business that you actually serve, and you might want to be aware of that and now you can actually do that follow up and manage that relationship and continue to live out that mission.

Chad Gramling (06:55):

We say a lot of times, we’re a credit union, we're all building the foundation of people helping people. I always amend that to say, we are people helping people help themselves and that's really what our mission and our focus is, is to actually empower the consumer to have a more financially healthy lifestyle and livelihood. And I think data is one of the most important pieces of that because without that you don't know how to help them.

Jim Marous (07:20):

Well, it's interesting because for years the credit union industry talked about we're for our members, we're doing this for our members, we have friendly people on the front line well. As we've gone into much more digital environment where people are accessing their accounts and not going to the branches nearly at the rate they were before, that access to data, that democratization of data, that ability to address each member's needs and their desire for financial wellness really goes far beyond being friendly.

Jim Marous (07:53):

And your organization really has done this. What was the biggest shift in the way data was being used? Because you've been on the front edge of that the whole time. What was your vision? And go back maybe 10 years, maybe it's only five years to say what was the change in the way you looked at what you're going to do with data rather than just understanding your members really saying, "We've got to use this for our members."

Chad Gramling (08:21):

Man, that's, again, a lot of different ways that we could spin that and not really spin, but we could wax poetic on that all day long. It really comes down to the way that our consumers exist today. They expect the companies that they work with to know them, to understand them and I personally take offense.

Chad Gramling (08:45):

I've never been the type that is, "We got to be like this competitor, or we got to be like this competitor, or we got to, we got to do this because so and so's doing this." But as an industry, we should be offended that Credit Karma knows our members better than we do and to me, that's where I take a little bit of offense.

Chad Gramling (09:03):

And so, I'm kind of going more on my tangent here. But it's more and I use this analogy a lot is there's always been this trepidation of, well, we don't want to pry too deeply into our members' finances because it's their privacy and they don't want us to infringe on that and we don't want to be big brother.

Chad Gramling (09:24):

And it's really not about being big brother, it's not about being creepy, it's about understanding who we serve and how we can serve them better. And I use the analogy if somebody doesn't want to tell us about their finances or where they want to go, it's almost like we get in an Uber and tell the driver it's none of their business where I'm going.

Jim Marous (09:42):

It's a great analogy. I like that.

Chad Gramling (09:44):

We are here-

Jim Marous (09:44):

You won't get there.

Chad Gramling (09:45):

That's right, we're here to take you to someplace you want to go, we need that information, and we utilize that information to get you there.

Jim Marous (09:54):

It's interesting because I look back on my career and the way we tried to target people and try to help them and the reality is you're right. People get concerned about if you know too much about me but if you're not letting your financial institution know about you, you're really going to have our hands tied behind our back.

Jim Marous (10:11):

On the other hand, we also don't want the old days where if you sat down with a financial planner, they take all this paperwork, and you saw them put it in their side drawer and you said, "You knew at that moment, I'm not as valuable as the last three people you visited and the next three people are going to visit," that's never going to come out of your drawer.

Jim Marous (10:31):

I think what you're doing at 3Rivers is you're really trying very hard to make it so we're going to do as much as we can to not make it so we don't show you value. Because again, my conversation point is we're paying Amazon about 130, maybe $150 a year now to give us targeted impressions. We're not doing it for free delivery because they get free delivery, we're not doing it for overnight delivery because I think almost everybody can get overnight delivery, we're not doing it for movies, we're not doing it for books, why are we doing that?

Jim Marous (11:02):

Because we don't want to let go of that relationship that right now has been trusted, we have a strong value transfer and we have the ability to really show, they have the ability, as Uber does on a regular basis, saying, "We're utilizing your information for your benefit."

Jim Marous (11:19):

And as I claim a lot, the biggest problem with many financial institutions, they don't show the customer that they know them, that they understand them, how do you do that at 3Rivers? How do you work to make it so your members understand you're paying attention, you're out for their good rather than your good.

Chad Gramling (11:42):

And that is a great question and I think that's where a lot of us get hung up. I think for us, it's really about unifying that experience across the different channels and platforms. And we've done our surveys, we've talked to our members and we know we are a digital first society, digital.

Chad Gramling (12:05):

Members will tell us, “Yes, digital is my preferred. If I were given the option of digital, personal or hybrid, digital first, then number two hybrid.” The people matter but they're not going to be my first go-to.

Jim Marous (12:21):

Well, it's interesting because during your career, you went from branch being supported by not digital, but we'll say digital to now digital being the primary and the branch being the support. And it's interesting because it changes how you communicate, the answers you provide and the way you provide them.

Chad Gramling (12:40):

That's right. And if you are sending one message across one channel in a counter message on another channel, all of a sudden then you've lost that trust. The consumer knows, "Okay, they don't have their stuff together, they aren't really knowing me, they don't know how to move me forward,” and they're going to look for it somewhere else.

Jim Marous (13:02):

Exactly. In the reward sense. They're not really providing me solutions, in the old days, they're providing the car loan offer in the fall, they're providing the equity credit offer in the spring. Everybody's getting this offer and it's a mass mailing through digital and we're trying to avoid that.

Jim Marous (13:19):

Now, we talk a lot about personalization and AI, we use, as I've seen in the industry, mostly we're using AI for back-office efficiency, for automation, we're using it for fraud and risk heavily that's where we used it first. How is 3Rivers and a monetized leveraging AI today to deliver more personalized communication engagement?

Chad Gramling (13:48):

And that is a good question. I will say we are probably more on that side of the realms of focusing our AI efforts on the operational side.

Jim Marous (13:58):

As most are.

Chad Gramling (14:00):

It's when you start pushing, when you start tying your data to AI, that's a sort of a different security area that I don't think we've really broached that yet.

Jim Marous (14:10):

Is that a mission of yours?

Chad Gramling (14:12):

Someday.

Jim Marous (14:13):

To some degree?

Chad Gramling (14:14):

Absolutely. It's to help us make that informed awareness and understanding. At the end of the day, it's important for us to be able to leverage those emerging technologies. We don't necessarily want to leverage them before their time because that could create some hardships, some issues.

Chad Gramling (14:38):

For us on the personalizing sense, we're leveraging a lot of the tools we get through Alkami and our other partners that we work with to get an understanding of what's going on in their life right now to understanding through their transactional activity what type of personas they are, what sorts of things.

Chad Gramling (14:58):

You mentioned auto loans, going on a cyclical approach, we tend not to think on a seasonal calendar any longer. It's not, "Oh, it's spring, we got to do auto loans and mortgages, and now it's summer, we got to do checking accounts and then we'll do debit card," it's not like that any longer. It's we're always on with all of our offers, and it's a matter of being personal, timely, and relevant to when we're presenting those opportunities to our members.

Chad Gramling (15:25):

It's okay, great, you sent me a postcard in the spring for an auto loan, where were you six months ago when my car was breaking down and I needed a car and I ended up going to a dealer and getting my loan through a different financial because you didn't know me well enough to know I was having struggles.

Chad Gramling (15:44):

We're able to start identifying those sorts of things and understanding, okay, this person is doing frequent auto repairs, or this person does have an automobile that's in a breakdown range. So, it's using that knowledge and then making that timely relevant offer.

Jim Marous (16:06):

So, let's take a short break here and recognize the sponsor of this podcast, Alkami Technologies.

Jim Marous (16:16):

Welcome back to the FIsionaries Podcast, sponsored by Alkami Technologies. So, you're actually tracking events … are you tracking flows of funds?

Chad Gramling (16:27):

Yes. Yeah.

Jim Marous (16:30):

Congratulations because that's my biggest frustration, our industry as a whole, is that we have so much information. My business bank and my personal bank knows that I'm transferring money between those two twice a month but never has either organization referenced that and said, "We can make this easier."

Jim Marous (16:49):

They both know my mortgage, they know my mortgage payment, which means they know my interest rate because they know when I got it, they know where I got it from, they know my car loan, they know my Robin Hood recount, they know my Acorns account yet they've never referenced the fact that we could do this better.

Jim Marous (17:06):

That's almost the holy grail at this point, without getting into things that are PII, maybe. What is the biggest change you've seen? I'm going to take a short span over the last three years and as you look to the next some years, what are you most proud of over the last three years that you've done that makes that connection with your members stronger and what's on the table right now you're working on?

Chad Gramling (17:35):

Wow. Obviously, there's a lot of pride in what we've built from a data infrastructure with the data warehouse and with leveraging some of the partnerships that we have with Alkami and other folks like SavvyMoney and the segment tools, we definitely have a stronger beat on the pulse of the member.

Chad Gramling (17:54):

We always say in the industry, well, when a member removes their direct deposit, that's too late, we should have known before that. Well, now we do and we can start to identify those signals and then be there with that awareness with that reach out. Again, that's where the person comes in. It goes a lot further to have a branch manager that you work with, regularly call you than here's an email saying, "Don't forget about us," that sort of thing. You need to be very proactive in that regard.

Jim Marous (18:33):

So, you democratize the data down to the branch level where they can take access of things and can reinforce what you're doing in the more traditional digital marketing and all that. So, you're obviously punching well above your weight which is what FIsionaries Podcast is all about, is organizations punching above their weight.

Jim Marous (18:53):

You can't do that without management support. Can you talk a little bit about how maybe it was something that was already in place when you started the company but how management has been able to evolve and look at the way banking and Credit Union Association work is done differently than what they did in the past?

Jim Marous (19:13):

Because heck, you could rest on your laurels. You've got 25 years under your belt at 3Rivers, you're an important cog in that wheel, but how do we look beyond what we're doing and how does your management team really embrace what you're doing?

Chad Gramling (19:30):

I'd share candidly, and I tell this with any vendor that we're working with as we start entering into partnership levels, and I don't say this as a joke, it comes across as a joke, but I do tell them we are a cookie cutter's worst nightmare, so if you want to block us into a cookie cutter we're going to challenge you because we don't do things a typical way.

Chad Gramling (19:54):

And if we wanted a cookie cutter approach, that's one thing, but we're really looking for partners that we can help further what their capabilities are, at the same time furthering our own capabilities and serving our membership just because seven other institutions do it one way doesn't mean that's the best way.

Chad Gramling (20:15):

And so, we need to know what works for us and what our members need and then that's how we approach those sorts of relationships, and I think that sort of mentality permeates throughout most of what we do.

Jim Marous (20:31):

Interesting. We're seeing that more and more in the industry where it's not just the vendors providing solutions to the financial institutions. It's now the financial institutions pushing those buttons that are making it so the vendors have to move faster, have to change their delivery, have to change their solutions to the degree not making it so everyone is custom but we're pushing it to new levels saying, "Have you thought about putting this data into this solution for this technology and the reverse of that at times?

Chad Gramling (21:03):

And we don't say it to push and say, "You have to do it our way, or it's a highway," we're looking for flexibility and nimbleness that we can get closer to that vision rather than just trying to force our will so that's the approach we try to take. And like I say, at the end of the day, it comes down to is how do we best serve our members and our membership.

Jim Marous (21:28):

So, data, analytics, deployment, part that comes into that is innovation in the product side. How has your data been used and your analytics been used to improve maybe how you deliver services to your members, how you create new service to your members. Maybe something as simple as how easily it is to open a new account or open new loan relationship, what have you done in that space?

Chad Gramling (21:57):

That's something we're always looking at. It's always how can it be easier? How can it be better? How can the experience be less friction? That seems to be the buzz term du jour these days is frictionless experience, there's always going to be something that needs to be done but again, I go back to the Credit Karmas of the world and how easy it is to initiate that first step of getting into a product. And you're absolutely right, how do we replicate that level of low friction?

Chad Gramling (22:33):

And so, we're constantly looking at that, looking at solutions again, working with our partners to try and make that come to fruition. We've done a lot of what we sort of would call the running of the experiment of, "Okay, let's try it this way and see how it goes. If it doesn't work out or it's not attracting the sort of response that we're looking for, let's try a different approach."

Chad Gramling (22:54):

Sometimes it's just getting the awareness to the individual at the right time but product development, again, we do surveys, we do member surveys, we do an NPS on a monthly basis. I've been overseeing that for the most part, basically since 2013.

Chad Gramling (23:09):

So, I tell you all about the historical of NPS and we do it our way and I get in this fight a lot is a lot of people will contend that NPS is a satisfaction survey, and I never, ever, ever will agree with them. It's not a satisfaction survey; this is something that's going to help us determine our capacity for growth especially through word of mouth and so we do a lot of that and we actually do-

Jim Marous (23:35):

Facts is not enough.

Chad Gramling (23:36):

Right. We do follow up with all those surveys too. We ask our member, "Can we contact you about this survey?" And we try to honor the wishes, or we do honor the wishes if they say they do not want to be contacted, that doesn't mean we don't put a note on the account so that somebody that helps that member later on can actually bring it up in conversation. But we do also follow up and that's an important part and again, that's where the people are critical. Digital is important, digital is critical, I would contend the people aspect is just as critical.

Jim Marous (24:09):

It's interesting. One of my greatest joys about doing the FIsionaries Podcast is meeting people like you that work at organizations where they've made an impact, but their members or their customers are feeling that impact daily.

Jim Marous (24:25):

There's not many layers but even if there are from an organizational chart, but there's not many layers between you and the member, you and the organization, the way you deploy that insight around the organization, what's on your to-do list right now?

Chad Gramling (24:40):

What's on the to-do list?

Jim Marous (24:42):

Or what's the biggest challenge you're trying to solve for right now?

Chad Gramling (24:45):

Well, I think right now, and as I mentioned, we've brought our business intelligence marketing and digital experience together under one umbrella. So, there is a little bit of reacquainting and sequencing and getting our synergies in place to drive that. That's probably not something that's going to take an enormous amount of time; we're already hitting our stride with that and that's great.

Chad Gramling (25:11):

So, the to-do list is really how do we streamline that democratization of the data? How do we make it just as relevant to our team and the opportunities that we present to them as it is to the member at the time that they have the need and to me, we got a little bit of cleanup to do there. I think there's still some noise and some friction in that process and so that's definitely something that's on the horizon.

Chad Gramling (25:39):

Continuing to just drive towards that operational excellence is really where that resides, definitely, would like to serve more members, that's an important thing. And I always try to remind our team that we have the privilege of serving people with their financial wellness, they have plenty of choices and for me-

Jim Marous (26:06):

And many of them are using them.

Chad Gramling (26:07):

That's right. And we could go into the PFIs discussion as well, that's a whole other thing. And to me, I've kind of just admitted people are going to use other services and in some cases that might be a good thing. But it's a matter of understanding why they use those services, what they're doing with them, and then how does that relate to how we serve our members and really again, at the end of the day, it's where does that member want to go and how do we help them get there?

Jim Marous (26:40):

You've brought together the data analytics and the digital marketing, digital connections but it's very clear you’re also bringing the people aspect back to the equation. And as a result, if you see that all of a sudden, you're starting to see flow of funds where I'm transferring money to Robinhood, I'm transferring money to a new car loan and we've missed them when they were shopping for a car, we can make a phone call and grab them back and the shorter the timeframe is between what we want to do and when we do it, that's going to be the key.

Chad Gramling (27:13):

Finally, last question, you're going to have to go back ways because you're really advanced because you've been doing this for a while. But if you want to give a financial institution that one piece of advice, and they're trying to not start their data journey, everybody's in their data journey, but actually want to make it so it's a more personalized journey, a more democratized journey, what's that one piece of key advice as you look back and you go, "Man, if I had known back then as I know it now, this is where I would start, this is what I would do."

Chad Gramling (27:45):

That is a great question and we've always said more data has never been the issue. It's always how do we use the data? And when I started in '99, we had an MCIF system. MCIF is … the newer folks probably don't even know what that term is. So, we had an MCIF system, I avoided that. I was like, "I don't want anything to do with this. I'm going to just be happy dealing with-

Jim Marous (28:10):

I'm going to stick with my CRM.

Chad Gramling (28:13):

I'm going to just do this website and I'm going to do this online banking and I'll be okay. But I started getting more and more pulled into the MCIF arena and I started to understand, okay, here's how we can actually utilize this and be curious.

Chad Gramling (28:28):

Again, not to snoop or pry or big brother on the member, it's okay, now we can start to understand this and now we can start to see, oh, there's pockets of opportunity with this group of members or this group of members, and this one would not be receptive to this offer. So, there was that understanding and I know this is a long way of answering your question but it's again, be curious.

Chad Gramling (28:53):

And for us, what was instrumental was we found somebody with experience in building that data infrastructure and made it an emphasis by creating the business intelligence group. We brought in that person, we created that structure, that foundation, and now we have the ability to now go out and make something powerful throughout all parts of the organization rather than just, "Oh, that's data."

Chad Gramling (29:20):

Well, don't make data the afterthought on any of your projects or your initiatives or anything, we need to be able to have that ability to ingest and to then transform and then to actually orchestrate and engineer that so that it can then be turned into actionable tactics and notifications and getting the whole team involved.

Jim Marous (29:47):

Boy, I love your recommendation to be curious. Because especially now with ChatGPT and all the different generative AI tools, you can take data, you can put it into the generative AI tool, and you can ask it questions about what should I do with these things? I'm a financial institution, I'm trying to do this, this, and this, that curiosity.

Jim Marous (30:09):

I think we've talked about before since the start everybody's day because if you learn how to ask the questions, which we go back to the days where you ask the questions, you had to wait forever for the IT department to give you some answers, the reality is now it can be generated instantaneously.

Jim Marous (30:25):

And even the more broad question that may not use specific data, the ability to say, "How are financial institutions doing this or how are they addressing this issue?" I think being curious is amazing and again, your point of reference and saying, and to be able to make sure that you deploy against what you learn-

Chad Gramling (30:43):

Have the end goal in mind.

Jim Marous (30:44):

It doesn't do any good if you just let everybody in your organization know everything about everybody if the customers don't know it. Chad, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Been great.

Chad Gramling (30:56):

Likewise.