"We love you, but you suck at banking": How one credit union CEO turned this (very loyal) complaint into momentum

The best piece of member research we heard at the World Credit Union Conference in Sydney last week was a single, stand-out sentence: "We love you, but you suck at banking."

That transparency came from Wellington Holbrook, President and CEO of Vancity. It was, more or less in those words, what members had told the Vancouver-based credit union. Not "we're leaving" or "you've let us down". Something far more useful: we're still here, we still believe in you, and you are falling behind at the one job we came to you for.

If you run a credit union, that could be the most loyal complaint you will ever receive - but it's also the easiest one to miss.

The numbers looked 'ok'

Holbrook was refreshingly open about how Vancity got there. This is an organisation with deep community roots and a real social mission, and it had just posted its first loss in more than 50 years. Not because of any single dramatic event, but because - in his telling - it had grown complacent and had under-invested in technology for the better part of a decade.

The crisis didn't arrive suddenly, as a disruptor storming the gates. It took the form of a slow and quiet erosion, while the headline numbers still looked broadly fine. Membership held. The brand was loved. Yet underneath, the gap between what members expected and what the bank could deliver kept widening.

This is the trap for customer-owned banks in particular. Members are loyal, often for life and across generations, and that loyalty is your greatest asset. It is also what lets a problem hide, because loyal members will stay on your books long after they have quietly moved their real financial lives somewhere sharper.

Momentum works in reverse

"There is more risk in not taking on the transformation than in taking it on," said Wellington.

We tend to think of momentum as a good thing you build, but momentum also works in reverse.

Every year you defer the hard modernisation work, the climb gets a little steeper, member expectations move a little further ahead, and the people who could lead the change get a little more tired of asking.

AI is what turns that slow slide into a fast one. It's raising what members treat as normal, faster than any previous wave of technology, from a big bank's app to an instant, sensible answer about their own money. Institutions with sound foundations will use it to pull further ahead. The ones still running last decade's set-up will find the same tools mostly expose how far behind they already are.

Standing still has never been cheaper to choose, or more expensive to keep.

The other side of the wave

If momentum can run backwards, it can also run forwards, and Holbrook was clear about where the next surge comes from. He framed the industry as a series of waves. Banking started on paper. Then it went digital, and the institutions slow to follow lost ground. Then the disruptors arrived, the Revoluts and the Monzos, and won over a younger generation.

The wave now forming is AI, and in his view it is the one that disrupts even the disruptors. His challenge to the room was blunt: if credit unions are not already reimagining themselves as technology businesses, they are on the wrong track. But the same wave is the opening. There is no reason a credit union cannot be in that fourth group, because AI does not reward the biggest technology budget. It rewards the institution that can turn what it already knows about its members into something genuinely useful, and do it quickly.

That is why standing still is the real risk. It is not only that the climb gets steeper. It is that the one wave capable of putting a member-owned institution ahead of the majors arrives while you are still deciding whether to move.

"Core change is a CEO-killer", and other reasons to wait

The caution is understandable. Changing the core of a regulated institution is genuinely hard, and it has a reputation to match. More than one leader in Sydney described a major technology change as a "CEO-killer", the kind of project that ends the career of whoever championed it if it goes wrong.

When the downside is that personal, "not yet" starts to look like the responsible choice. But "not yet", repeated for ten years, is how you end up posting your first loss in fifty.

The safe-looking option and the safe option are not the same thing.

How to modernise at pace

So the real question is not whether to transform, but how to do it quickly, without losing control.

Here's what we know works. Be honest and transparent about who is accountable to lead the change, and about where you might have failed before - and what you learned from it. Keep the board close enough to unblock the work, and sharp enough to question management's plans, not simply approve them. And anchor all of it to what the institution is actually trying to achieve, so governance becomes the thing that lets you move quickly and safely, not the brake that stops you moving at all.

That is the whole idea behind objective-led governance, and it is what we've built at Drova. Start from your objectives, connect every risk, control and obligation back to them, and you can make bigger decisions faster, because you can see what each one protects and what it puts at stake. The foundation is what makes the pace achievable, and scalable.

The good news is that you don't have to bet the core to begin. Our free trial lets you point Drova at your own objectives and risks and see how it feels to work this way, with no commitment. It is a low-risk way to stop standing still.