The team asked me this week what's trending on social for the credit union sector. Fair question, slightly awkward answer. I don't have a listening tool counting hashtags, and I'd treat anyone who claims to read a whole sector's mood from a LinkedIn scroll with some caution. So there's no league table here and no percentages.
What I can offer is the set of conversations that keep coming back round, in my feed and on the calls I have with credit union and building society people. They repeat for a reason. Here is my read on each.
Consumer Duty has moved from policy to evidence
With the Duty well bedded in, the posts have changed tone. Fewer people are sharing summaries of the rules. More are asking how you actually show good outcomes to a board, or to the FCA if it comes knocking. Closed products came into scope in July 2024, which pulled a lot of older savings accounts into the discussion.
My view is that most firms have the intent and lack the data. If you cannot see where applicants drop out or how long a loan decision really takes, you are writing outcome reports from anecdote. That is a systems problem, and a fixable one.
Open banking for affordability
There's steady interest in using account data for income and expenditure checks on loans. People mostly share it as a speed story: a decision in minutes instead of payslips posted in. The more useful point gets less airtime. Transaction data shows what someone actually spends, which leads to better lending decisions for exactly the members credit unions exist to serve, the ones with irregular income or thin credit files.
What I hear as the sticking point is consent drop-off, and members not trusting the "connect your bank" screen. Clear explanation copy and a sensible fallback route matter as much as the API behind them.
Fraud versus friction
Any thread about digital onboarding attracts two camps. One side wants fewer steps because applications are abandoned halfway through. The other has just dealt with a synthetic identity or a money mule account and wants more checks. Both are right, which is why the argument never ends.
Where I come down: put the checks where the risk is. A returning member topping up a savings account should not face the same hurdles as a brand-new loan applicant. Risk-based onboarding is old practice in larger banks. Smaller institutions mostly lacked the tooling to do it without adding staff.
AI, mostly at a distance
Plenty of posts about AI, few about using it. The tone among credit union people is cautious, and I think rightly so. Nobody wants a model declining a loan in a way a human can't explain to the member or the regulator.
The sensible uses are duller than the headlines. Summarising a case for an underwriter, or drafting a reply that a member of staff checks before it goes out. Governance first, a named person accountable, and the human makes the call. That approach rarely goes viral, but it's the one that survives an audit.
Reaching people who don't know you exist
A perennial one. Posts about attracting younger members, and about explaining what a credit union is to people who've never come across one. Much of it focuses on brand and social content, which is fine as far as it goes.
My blunter take is that the marketing often works better than the follow-through. If someone clicks through from a well-made post and meets a PDF form or a request to visit a branch, the campaign budget has largely gone on raising awareness for your competitors. Acquisition and onboarding need designing together.
What gets less attention
Underneath most of these sits integration. Consumer Duty evidence, open banking checks, risk-based onboarding and careful use of AI all depend on your front end talking properly to your core system, and on your data being in reasonable shape. It's unglamorous and it doesn't trend. This is also where most projects either succeed or quietly stall.
We built Twickenham Community Bank, our demonstration bank, to prove that end to end on the N2 Platform, from first click to a funded account. I'm happy to walk anyone through it.
If any of these conversations are live in your organisation, I'd be glad to compare notes.