Main Street AI

Ankur Patel interviews Jerry Saalsaa, SVP and Chief Operating Officer at CUES.

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CUES is the association that develops credit union executives and boards. Jerry argues the best AI ideas come from emerging leaders rather than the C suite, warns that shiny new objects and thin board governance are the real danger, and expects only 60% of credit unions to still stand alone in ten years.

Guest: Jerry Saalsaa, SVP and Chief Operating Officer, CUES
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Jerry
0:30 Where the best AI thinking comes from
2:20 Problem first or AI first
4:05 Budgeting AI for 2027
6:07 Getting the data house in order
8:01 When AI pays back
9:10 Urgency and momentum
11:42 Efficiency versus revenue
13:29 The role of partners
14:58 Choosing an AI partner
16:08 Shiny new objects
17:59 How CUES uses AI
20:26 Consolidation and leadership turnover
22:23 Who is taking the top jobs
25:12 Rapid fire
25:31 How many credit unions stand alone in 10 years
27:30 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Torrance Harris, Senior Director of Innovations at Luminate.

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Luminate is the league for Louisiana's credit unions, most of them $100 million or smaller. Torrance argues those small credit unions already understand AI and know what th ey need; the math just isn't mathing, so the league screens vendors for after-sale support and bundles small institutions into one price so they don't have to merge.

Guest: Torrance Harris, Senior Director of Innovations, Luminate
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Torrance
0:33 Torrance's path into credit unions
1:45 Nobody calls asking for AI
3:47 Membership growth
5:46 Growing the loan portfolio
8:07 Fintech speed vs. bank budgets
10:02 How Luminate vets vendors
14:24 The math isn't mathing
16:12 Louisiana by the numbers
19:40 Merger pressure
21:09 What small credit unions need to thrive
22:48 Rapid fire
25:02 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Ben Mrva, EVP and Chief Operating Officer at Orion Federal Credit Union.

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Orion Federal Credit Union is a $1.3B credit union in Memphis, Tennessee. Ben, a twenty-year consultant turned COO, explains how Orion found its AI savings by bringing fraud and mortgage servicing in-house and leaning less on consultants, not by cutting staff, and why a data lake has to come before anything bigger.

Guest: Ben Mrva, EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Orion Federal Credit Union
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Ben
0:34 How AI changed work at Orion
1:52 Data readiness and the branch transaction count
3:40 Why credit union data was never ready
6:28 Incumbents, fintechs and the Filene pitch room
8:59 From demo to production
11:03 Who owns the integration
12:58 Corelation KeyStone as a partner
14:22 Bringing people along
16:46 Hospitality first, AI second
18:57 Competing with the big banks
21:45 The fintech pressure
24:43 Budgeting AI for 2027
25:51 Bringing fraud and mortgage servicing in-house
28:59 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Garrett Jorewicz, who leads the Innovation and Enterprise Solutions team at Credit Union 1 (CU1).

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Credit Union 1 grew from $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion in assets through eight to ten mergers a year and doubled its members without adding a single person to its contact center. Garrett's argument is that this was the easy part: he puts the share of credit unions that could run an AI agent against all their data at under 1%, CU1 included, and says getting there means freezing projects to fix the data layer first.

Guest: Garrett Jorewicz, Innovation and Enterprise Solutions, Credit Union 1 (CU1)
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Garrett
0:21 Under 1% of credit unions
0:48 Why the data still isn't in order
3:37 Voluntary open heart surgery
5:41 Contact center as the entry point
6:59 Eight to ten mergers a year
13:08 Four AI vendors, four knowledge bases
15:31 The contact center RFP
17:04 The data cockpit
19:04 Sorting through vendor noise
23:22 Who pays for AI
27:44 Do I need to replace that person
29:11 Same vendors, same tools
34:05 Friction drives behavior
37:03 Twelve seconds or eleven minutes on hold
38:55 Credit unions in ten years
41:06 What credit unions should stop doing
43:42 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Whitney Anderson, Leadership Strategist and founder of Anderson Growth Advisors.

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Whitney advised credit unions before taking the chief growth officer role at Sunward Credit Union, which runs $4.6 billion in assets and more than 170,000 members out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. After seats as an operator, a sitting CEO, and an outside consultant, Whitney's read is that what blocks AI in credit unions isn't the technology but fear, and that the goal was never to be first to market, just a very close second.

Guest: Whitney Anderson, Leadership Strategist and founder of Anderson Growth Advisors
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

Whitney's memoir, She Walked Anyway: The Story of a Woman Who Refused to Stay Down: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1636988776
Her consulting practice, Anderson Growth Advisors: https://andersongrowthadvisors.com

0:00 Introduction: Meet Whitney
0:41 The career arc
4:13 Walking again, the book, and Anderson Growth Advisors
5:01 What adversity changed
6:26 What a consultant sees from the outside
8:06 The challenges facing credit unions
9:26 Is AI just more technology
12:02 Drawing the line on member-facing AI
15:13 Moving the AI skeptics
16:50 Fear, not technology
18:32 Can small credit unions keep up
20:07 The leader credit unions aren't hiring yet
22:16 What the leading credit unions do differently
24:21 Where to find She Walked Anyway
25:24 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Erik Librader, Client Partner, and Ian Butler, Chief Technology Officer, at Vistrada.

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Vistrada is a business risk and technology consultancy that sits inside dozens of institutions after the AI contract is signed, which makes this an outside-in view of what actually works and what quietly fails. Erik and Ian break down the 95% of AI spend that never produces measurable return, why the right architecture is usually a chain of small models rather than a chatbot, and why handing expertise to AI means handing over decision making and control with it.

Guest: Erik Librader, Client Partner, Vistrada
Guest: Ian Butler, Chief Technology Officer, Vistrada
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Erik and Ian
0:39 What the first AI call sounds like
2:11 Clients who don't know where to begin
3:10 AI is the tool, not the chair
5:14 Speed is what's different
7:38 Why AI projects fail
10:59 Business process optimization in an AI coat
13:59 Not an AI consultancy
15:45 Repurpose the headcount
18:24 Offload expertise, offload control
21:23 Snake oil in the vendor market
23:24 Loan origination and traceability
26:59 Where the real AI risk lives
31:25 Budget, sponsorship, ownership
32:55 Is the organization ready
34:30 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Jason Stverak, Chief Advocacy Officer at the Defense Credit Union Council.

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DCUC is the 63-year-old trade association for the 200-plus credit unions serving the U.S. military, holding $525 billion in assets for more than 40 million members. Jason argues that with 4,200 credit unions left from north of 10,000 fifteen years ago, the small ones survive AI by pooling through CUSOs, deliberately targeting a B instead of an A-plus, and getting the NCUA to hand them a sandbox rather than a rulebook.

Guest: Jason Stverak, Chief Advocacy Officer, Defense Credit Union Council
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Jason
0:55 What DCUC is
2:38 CU Unplugged
4:44 Consolidate or die
8:40 Credit unions as the AI proving ground
11:31 The volunteer board pushes the agenda
13:22 Automation and the member relationship
15:02 Finding the dollars for software
18:35 AI was supposed to democratize
20:20 We need a B, not an A plus
23:28 The case for an NCUA sandbox
25:56 The regulator as matchmaker
27:30 What Jason is protecting
29:02 Closing

Ankur Patel interviews Mike Lawson, Founder and Host of CUbroadcast.

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Mike has interviewed more than 8,000 credit union leaders as host of CUbroadcast, giving him a view across the entire industry rather than one seat inside one institution. His sharpest take: the smallest credit unions are often the best AI adopters because their teams wear so many hats they have to automate, while SoFi onboards more new customers in a year than the whole industry combined.

Guest: Mike Lawson, Founder and Host, CUbroadcast
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Mike
0:39 What's changed, what's stayed the same
2:26 Fintech and big bank pressure
4:35 The collaborative advantage
8:39 Where credit unions are in the AI journey
10:17 Budgeting for AI
11:55 Use cases bubbling up
14:02 Why small credit unions excel at AI
16:55 AI in the call center
19:20 Fighting AI-powered fraud
23:10 Lessons from the global movement
24:07 The membership age problem
28:09 Consolidation and mergers
30:50 Fintech partnerships and vendor risk
33:06 Two imperatives for the next five years
34:40 Closing

Ishita Jaiswal, Head of Growth at Multimodal, interviews Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder of Multimodal.

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Multimodal builds agentic workflows for credit unions and community banks, covering member experience and lending operations. Ankur argues that a 2027 budget has to fund three things at once, an account on one of the big three models for every single person, a hard look at whether your incumbent vendors are opening their software up or walling it off, and a few net new agentic partners, with every vendor pushed to show simulated usage numbers before anyone signs.

Guest: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal
Host: Ishita Jaiswal, Head of Growth, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Ishita
0:57 The two categories of agentic AI
2:39 Where credit unions start on personal productivity
3:15 Leadership, stewards, and uneven adoption
6:06 Member experience and lending operations
8:12 Why growth beats cost efficiency
9:19 Three pieces of budgeting advice for 2027
13:20 Walled gardens and the SaaS apocalypse
16:19 Usage pricing, tokens, and simulated numbers
20:04 What Multimodal built for credit unions
23:43 The ROI bar and the tuition expense
25:56 Closing