Ankur Patel interviews Phil Caputo, Executive Vice President & Director of the Enterprise Project Management Office at State Employees' Credit Union.

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Phil runs the EPMO at SECU — the second-largest credit union in the US, nearly 3 million members, $60 billion in assets, on a core system older than many of its members. He makes the operator's case for being deliberately conservative on AI: why a late mover with a loyal, member-service-first base can afford to learn from others' pitfalls, how he separates real strategy from a wall of projects, and where AI does and doesn't earn a seat — governance and member service in, autonomous decisions out.

Guest: Phil Caputo, Director of the Enterprise Project Management Office, State Employees' Credit Union
Host: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal

0:00 Introduction: Meet Phil
0:43 What Phil walked into: a $60B credit union with no project governance
2:12 Building structure and who pushes back hardest
3:28 The missing middle: strategy between goals and projects
5:31 Going from big idea to real outcome: the digital overhaul
8:00 How governance and execution actually work at SECU
9:00 Post-implementation reviews and the rewards-card example
10:03 KPIs that measure outcomes, not activity
11:51 Buy versus build
15:02 AI as the next level of integration
15:59 When is a conservative AI policy grounded versus behind
18:34 Lessons from being conservative on prior technologies
23:58 What actually motivates SECU to move
25:13 Discovery: member requests, advisory boards, and tech debt
27:00 Recurring themes for improving member satisfaction
28:47 Which parts of the digital experience needed the most work
31:06 Unifying channels into one member experience
32:35 The members SECU has been missing
33:19 Where AI could materially improve member experience in three years
35:09 Closing