Featuring Pulsate CEO Sarah Martin
For their 2025 edition of the annual “Holiday Tech Wish List” feature, Finopotamus sat down with forward-looking fintech and credit union executives who shared their tech hopes and forecasted market realities for 2025 and beyond.
Wishing to Defeat the Data Monster
Pulsate CEO Sarah Martin hopes that more credit unions begin to view respective digital banking platforms as complete businesses or potential profit centers, as opposed to “transaction-focused” cost centers.
“With up to 30% of consumers checking their banking apps at least once per day, we’re getting more opportunities to understand and meet their needs than ever before,” Martin told Finopotamus.
The Dublin. Ire.-based fintech offers digital consumer engagement solutions for community FIs, with the goal of helping them build lasting, profitable relationships in a mobile-first world.
“Unfortunately, most digital banking technology is much better at facilitating transactions than at recognizing members’ needs and offering solutions in a real-time, proactive manner, which is a bit like opening a branch in a high-traffic area but failing to hire platform staff or train tellers to cross-sell,” Martin continued. “Meanwhile, the digital-only and neobanks have no choice but to solve the cross-selling and up-selling dilemma, and many have the results to show they’ve done it. Credit unions must leverage the right tech solutions to catch up.”
While Martin believes her wish can come true, the main hurdle she sees is ownership models. “For many credit unions, the digital channels are ‘owned’ by departments with no sales or revenue goals, and because those channels are visible and highly regarded, there may be hesitance to relinquish control,” she noted. “But that could also be a plus, as the path to the C-suite almost always goes through some part of the enterprise that contributes to the bottom line, so ambitious tech leaders should embrace the opportunity.”
For 2025, Martin also hopes the “data monster” will be defeated once and for all, so that data can finally be used to better understand member wants and needs.
“Every time a member logs in, calls in, swipes their card, pays a bill or clicks on a webpage or digital message, they create a datapoint that has the potential of exposing a need, which can become an opportunity for the credit union to suggest a product, provide a service or otherwise meet that need,” Martin continued. “The problem is that the volume of these datapoints is so large, many organizations don’t know where to start. This year, I hope every credit union picks a starting place–just one datapoint, even–and begin using it to benefit their members.”
Read responses from the four other fintechs featured in part 1 of the 2024 Finopotamus Holiday IT Wishlist here.
By W.B. King
Source: Finopotamus
