# Trust, Growth, and Staying True to Members: Four Takeaways from WCUC 2026
_Published: 2026-08-06T12:00:00.000-04:00_

nCino's Brad Wong shares four takeaways from WCUC 2026 on trust, lending and AI, and growth for customer-owned banks.

_Written by Brad Wong, nCino Director of Product, APAC Mortgage_

There's a worry I hear often in the customer-owned banking world. As the thinking goes, to keep pace with bigger, faster competitors, credit unions and mutuals will have to give up some of the closeness that members value most. I understand that fear. After attending this year's World Credit Union Conference ([WCUC](https://wcuc.org/)), I'm more convinced than ever they’re being presented with a false choice.

The conference came to Sydney this July. It's the council's main global gathering, drawing credit union and customer-owned institution leaders, regulators, and technology partners from around the world. I lead product for nCino's mortgage business across APAC, and this year the conference landed right on our doorstep, a short trip for our Australia team. It was a rare and welcome opportunity to connect with peers that I’ve often only been able to reach across time zones.

As a product leader, I spent a lot of time listening for the things that transform a member's experience. I left with four takeaways, all connected by one key idea: the sector's biggest opportunities don't ask it to trade away what makes it different.

## Trust is the currency, and it's earned in member experience

The customer-owned sector's advantage has always been trust, but that trust depends on awareness. Customer Owned Banking Association ([COBA](https://www.customerownedbanking.asn.au/)) presented research that found 74% of consumers don't know what customer-owned banking means, and nearly half don't feel they know enough to choose one. One of the sector's challenges is recognition, not trust or value.

COBA then tested a straightforward change. Instead of explaining ownership structures, it told real, human stories, framing the sector around ‘fairer banking’ and being ‘a name, not a number.’ Consideration rose from 41% to 58% on the language change alone.

Ireland offers the proof point, as its credit union movement has ranked first for reputation four years running, ahead of the big banks and global technology brands. Roughly three in four Irish people hold membership. That standing was earned over years of dedication to the members they serve, in the community, one relationship at a time.

Trust of that kind is built in ordinary moments, in whether opening an account or applying for a loan feels straightforward, and not in a marketing campaign. It's an area we focus on closely at nCino. We help institutions convert that goodwill into an experience that matches it, across every channel, so trust translates into growth.

## Engaging the generation that expects both heart and speed

Another figure stuck with me. In the US, credit unions' share of new deposit accounts [has fallen to around 10%](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/six-imperatives-for-credit-unions-to-secure-their-future), down from 16% a decade ago. The gap is almost entirely picked up by banks winning through digital reach. It's a US number, but the same tension came up throughout the Day 3 "Future of Cooperative Finance" panel.

David Malone framed it as a gap between brand affinity and salience. Ireland's credit unions score well on the first with over 80% of their millennials and Gen Z factoring ESG credentials into financial decisions. But salience is different. When a young person needs to open an everyday account, is a credit union even front of mind? For those under 25, Malone said, it isn't.

His fix wasn't delivering more values messaging, but rather more concrete value — the actual rate, the actual fee, delivered digitally, on demand. Digital access, he said, isn't a differentiator anymore; it's the price of entry. What remains distinctive is the human relationship built into that experience.

James Cudmore, Chief Customer & Digital Innovation officer at NGM Group, added another sharp point. Younger consumers' intentions and actions rarely match. His proof of what conversion looks like was Australia's industry super funds, which turned a similar values story into something concrete and commercial at scale. He also flagged the ~$4-5 trillion in generational wealth transfer expected in Australia over the next 15-20 years, which is arguably as important a target as youth alone.

The consensus was that younger members won't choose a credit union out of loyalty to the model. They'll choose it when the emotional connection is genuine, and the digital experience is frictionless enough that they never have to weigh the two against each other.

## Modernisation doesn't require replacing the core

Another concern comes up frequently, particularly among smaller institutions. Many believe modernisation requires a costly and disruptive core replacement. A breakout session from [Infosys Finacle](https://www.finacle.com/) challenged that head-on, and the financial institutions on the panel, all of whom had been through a core replacement, backed it up.

They reached a shared conclusion. Whether a migration succeeds or fails depends on trust — from regulators, the board, and members — long before it depends on the technology. None of the institutions on the panel had approached it as a single, sweeping change. The successful programmes were staged and incremental, moving one customer segment, product, or brand at a time, or renovating the core in place while it continued to run.

This closely mirrors how we build at nCino. Our platform is designed to sit alongside a lender's existing core rather than rip it out, so an institution can modernise the borrower journey without betting everything on a core replacement. The [intelligence is built into the platform](https://www.ncino.com/blog/agentic-homeownership-journey-ai-mortgage-lifecycle), not added on top of it, and because it's one connected system, the AI works with the context of the whole relationship rather than a fragment of it. This takes it back to the first key takeaway: knowing your members better allows you to serve them better, no trade-off required.

Take Summerland Bank for example, a customer-owned lender in regional Australia. [It modernised its lending](https://www.ncino.com/blog/from-legacy-limitations-to-digital-excellence-summerland-banks-transformation-story) off a stack of legacy systems without loosening its community-first model.

## Scale and soul aren't a trade-off

The sector's differentiator has always been relationships. Modernisation doesn’t have to compromise that.

David Malone, CEO of the Irish League of Credit Unions offered some framing I found useful. He described it as a value chain. Scale belongs at the manufacturing end, in the products and the back office, while the institution's soul lives at the point of contact, in the community and the relationship; with the human. One can be industrialised without disturbing the other.

Malone shared the closing 'Future of Cooperative Finance' panel with Bill Corbett, the CEO Stabilization Central Credit Union, and Cudmore. Neither of them was concerned about growth itself. Their concern was subtler. As an institution scales, it can grow comfortable and gradually begin to resemble the very organisations it once distinguished itself from. Lose sight of the purpose, and scale offers little protection.

At nCino, we think automation doesn't have to come at the expense of the human relationship. In fact, when handled well, it creates room for _more_ of it. The hours that were previously spent on manual processing can be spent with a member instead.

## Don't give up what makes you different

The idea that a credit union or mutual has to sacrifice its differentiator to keep up is inaccurate. I don’t think you have to pick a side — growth or closeness, soul or scale. The biggest opportunities don’t require trading away what makes a credit union a credit union.

- **Help people understand what you are.** Most people can't define customer-owned banking. When they do, consideration increases.
- **Improve the lending journey.** The borrowing process is where trust is being lost, and it's completely fixable.
- **Modernise without replacing the core.** Staged, API-led change delivers a better experience without a wholesale change.

If I had to reduce it to a single rule, it would be this. **Scale the parts of the business that benefit from scale. Protect the parts that give members a reason to choose you.**

At nCino, [we help credit unions and mutuals](https://www.ncino.com/blog/why-ncino-is-best-technology-partner-for-credit-unions) modernise the lending and member journey without a rip-and-replace, so they can grow while remaining the institution that knows its members by name. That's the conversation I came home from the conference wanting to continue.

[_nCino Mortgage_](https://www.ncino.com/en-GB/mortgage/anz)_ supports lenders in Australia and New Zealand from first enquiry to settlement — and everything in between. Connect your borrowers, brokers, and lending teams on a single, unified platform and achieve a faster speed to offer, better experiences and real growth._

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