Happy Thursday!
Morning. Most of you don't have a written AI policy yet. I know because I ask, on this podcast and off it. Hashim at Wescom does, and it shows, his team's running Copilot and virtual assistants in production while a lot of CUs are still figuring out who owns the decision. NCUA just cut eleven rules. That's less an excuse for the rest of you.
TRENDING AI NEWS FOR CU
NCUA just cleared out eleven rules
The board finalized the first round of its Deregulation Project on August 5, cutting prescriptive requirements around policy documentation, chartering eligibility, and management interlocks. It lands right as Chairman Hauptman exits and John Crews awaits Senate confirmation to replace him.
Why it matters for your CU: fewer boxes to check on old rules frees up staff hours for the stuff that actually needs a written policy right now, starting with AI governance.
BECU and SAFE clear their last regulatory hurdle
Three regulators signed off on the $34B combination this week. SAFE's members vote next, with a close targeted for January 1, 2027. If it goes through, that's the fourth-largest credit union in the country.
Why it matters for your CU: every merger at this scale resets what "normal" looks like for tech investment across the whole movement, even if you're nowhere near their size.
InvestiFi just raised $20M, and eight credit unions put their own money in
InvestiFi, a CUSO that embeds digital investing directly into online banking, closed the largest funding round ever for a fintech built solely for credit unions and community banks. Vibe Credit Union led it. The company grew from four clients in 2024 to more than 60 by this July.
Why it matters for your CU: nearly half of Gen Z and Millennial members are already investing somewhere, and 43% are doing it through a third-party app instead of yours.
DEEP DIVE
NCUA Deregulated Itself. What To Actually Do With It.
The eleven rules NCUA finalized this week won't make anyone's highlight reel. They strip prescriptive policy checklists for eligible obligations, clarify who qualifies for associational common bond membership, and raise the asset threshold for management interlock restrictions to $10 billion. None of that sounds exciting when written out loud.
But it means your compliance team just got hours back that used to go toward maintaining paperwork examiners no longer require.
Most credit unions still don't have a written AI policy. A NAFCU survey found 71% plan to invest in AI, but only 18% have one written down. That's not a budget problem. It's a time problem, and NCUA just handed some of that time back without anyone asking for it.
The credit unions that use this well aren't going to wait for a mandate. They'll take the hours NCUA just freed up and write down how they govern AI before an examiner asks why they haven't. Everyone else will still be bolting new AI use cases onto old compliance templates a year from now.
Three things to do this week:
Pull whatever written policy touches eligible obligations or chartering in your compliance library. See what NCUA just let you cut, then cut it.
Take the hours that free up and draft one page on how your CU governs AI: human review thresholds, audit trail requirements, vendor risk. One page beats zero.
Don't wait on Crews. These rules are already final regardless of who chairs next.
FROM MULTIMODAL
Welcoming Aaron Cain to the Multimodal Advisory Board
Aaron Cain, Director of Digital Innovation at Credit Union 1, joins the Multimodal Advisory Board
Aaron Cain leads digital innovation at Credit Union 1, and his focus sits squarely on the member-facing side: the interfaces, the channels, the everyday digital experience members actually touch.
That's a different lens than most of the folks already on this board bring, and we wanted it there on purpose. Business innovation and digital innovation don't always agree on what matters first. We'd rather have that tension sitting at the table than smoothed over before anyone sees it.
Welcome, Aaron.
If this week's issue has you thinking about where your CU actually stands, book time with us for a walkthrough.
What's Being Asked Right Now
Does NCUA require a written AI policy?
Not as a standalone rule, not yet. But NCUA's own AI FAQ confirms credit unions can use AI tools today, and its 2026 supervisory priorities fold AI straight into the frameworks examiners already use: vendor management, fair lending, third-party risk. In practice, that means examiners are already asking for one, rule or no rule.
What does an NCUA examiner actually ask about AI?
Four questions, consistently: do you have a board-approved AI policy, can you produce a full inventory of every AI tool in use, including ones buried inside vendor platforms, how do you vet AI vendors, and if AI touches lending, what fair-lending testing backs it up.
Does a smaller credit union get graded on a curve for this?
No. A $400 million credit union gets asked the same four questions as a $4 billion one. The answers just need to match your size, not skip the questions.
🎁 SEND THIS, GET THIS
Know someone still doing this by hand?
Forward this issue to one person on your team who's still buried in manual document review, and we'll send you "The True Cost of Manual Document Processing in Credit Unions." Real benchmark numbers from 70 credit union deployments. The kind of stat that ends a debate in your next board meeting.
Takes ten seconds. Beats another Slack message about it.
Let us know
Now that NCUA cleared some of the clutter, what's the first thing you're doing with the time back?
See you in the next!
