2025, Future Branches. Keynote: Driving Technology and Self-Service Adoption with Aloha

Reid Hinaga, SVP & Branch Division Manager, Hawaii State Federal Credit Union: All right.

Good morning and aloha. You do better than that. Come on. Aloha. Aloha. All right. My name is Reid Higa. I'm the Senior Vice President of Retail Delivery Manager At. This is my partner in crime, Kelsey Young. He's our retail experience senior department manager, and we're from Hawaii State Federal Credit Union.

We're the largest credit union in Hawaii. We got about 140,000 members, 2.8 billion assets. And today we came a kind of a long ways to get here, but always excited to meet new people. See some familiar faces. Met Brother Mike over there. That's my lala. So Mike but. Our topic today is driving technology and self service adoption with Aloha.

And when Kate, I talking to Kailyn before the conference, I was having a hard time thinking of a topic to present to you guys today, and let's give it a half for Kailyn and her team over there. Before I continued. Thank you Caitlin. I was thinking about what makes us special, what makes Hawaii special.

And it came down to there's a lower spirit we call it, right? People come to Hawaii for the beaches, the weather, right? But it's the people and how they make you feel that, a lower spirit that kind of keeps you coming back. So today just our agenda for today we'll get into some things meaning of aloha, some challenges but towards the end I want you to keep in mind it's that.

Aloha spirit. And if anyone is from New York or people from New York they call it that they have the New York state of mind, right? Having aloha state of mind by the end of this presentation. Okay? But boiling it down everything we're gonna talk about today's centers around aloha.

And it start with, it starts with compassion, right? Whenever you're rolling out technology in your branches sometimes, right? It's a lot of work for your internal partners. Your IT team, your facilities team, your training team, right? And even like finance team, we learned and it's like, hey, can you guys all cut the check for the new technology?

But there's gls, they gotta create, there's balancing issues with IT machines that they have to take care of. So it's not just internal partners, but think about how your members feel. With technology, we'll get into branch design of course. And then I talked a little bit about engagement on my panel the other day, and apparently I'm the spam guy after that panel.

But we'll get into success metrics and then leadership and choreography, which is the heart and the most important part of adoption with aloha. Okay. So what does aloha mean? It means a lot of things. It means kindness, gratitude, love, compassion, relationships. In Hawaii, we say aloha as a hello.

We also say it as a goodbye, right? But having that aloha in your heart, it can mean a lot of different things. And I'm sure when you guys come to Hawaii, you guys feel it. Okay. Diving a little bit deeper, right? The first thing is about putting yourselves and ourselves in our members or customers shoes, right?

How are they gonna feel when they see the new technology? Or even just hear about it, right? They're probably gonna have some fears and some concerns, but then we have to have compassion for it then, right? Again, it's not something like Field of Dreams where you build it. They will come, they'll use it.

They'll love it. But try to address their feelings about technology and then when you're designing it design it, not just around the machines and highlighting it. Putting some fancy graphics that lights up, right? Design it around your people as well. They have to move within the space, right?

The space has to have aloha, okay? And again, it comes down to people helping people. And being flexible with servicing options. And I put this graphic up. You guys probably seen that movie, Lilo and Stitch, right? Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind as she says. So there's some people who just.

Will not, cannot use technology, right? But they're still important customers and members. So how are we gonna still take care of some basic over the counter transactions where they just can't use the new technology to complete it. Figure out a way where we provide that to members.

Okay. Some challenges that I've seen with digital adoption. Okay.

This one hits home for me. To start, press any key in Homer over there. Where's the any key? And I actually, my dad, he's in his seventies. He's trying to use com, a computer. And I remember him asking me this question when I was trying to help him, and he's just staring and I'm just like, dad. I press the space bar and he's like, where's the space bar?

I'm like, nevermind. I just hid it, but that's not showing aloha for my dad here. Then you've probably seen some, someone like this at the self checkout, right? And who knows? This person could have been a frequent user, but all it takes is that one time that item doesn't scan, or she can't find the produce number to enter right?

She might not use it again, but Right. Someone should be there, probably right by her. And see the expression to go assist instead of just pressing that button and the red light starts flashing and you're like, oh, damn. They know I'm in trouble. Some other things that I've seen, this was a fast food restaurant that rolled out digital or mobile ordering.

I think the screen could have been a little higher on this one, maybe. And then this one, new technology probably just opened this branch, but no one's using it. Sometimes my CFO is like Reed. We spent all this technology, no one's using it. I'm like, okay, you came in a slow time, but when people walk in, they're greeted and we try to get them to use it.

Right?

Talking about aligning digital within your physical branch spaces, right? And here's some things where it pops into your mind and you probably have to champion and pioneer to get that approval to roll out, right? There's consumer behavior and the digital migration trend, right?

Will people still come to the branches? And I think we established that in this conference. People still want to come, right? They wanna visit their money, right? They wanna see their people. Obviously there's staffing challenges, right? But with technology, we've been able to still optimally staff.

But when things happen, when people call us sick, when there's vacations, we can run a branch with two, three people. There's a rising cost of real estate, and if anyone who knows Hawaii real estate is high, so is insurance, and so is CAM expenses. There's online competition and of course big bank banks versus the smaller credit unions or smaller banks.

And there's that resource struggle, right? But take the jump. There's a, there's an opportunity to wall your client. We just opened on the left, our Salt Lake branch about seven years ago. The first branch to have ITM technology members are greeted. Now usage is up to about 65, 70% sometimes. And recently we installed a third machine.

But what was great about it is it wasn't just the members asking for another machine. 'cause when the branch is busy, they don't wanna wait. But our team was like, Hey, we need a third machine. So we took out a cash recycler and we put another one in. We listened to our teams On the right. Is our Safeway Kapa Hulu branch, an in-store branch.

This one is a huge branch. Kay. 280 square feet. Enormous. Okay. But we have two ITMs here. We have a smaller office for account opening loan applications. A kind of engagement center to help with servicing. But this is now 24 hours, so the store is open 24 hours. Our machines are open 24 hours right now, and we're not there 24 hours a day.

But after they use it, they get comfortable with it and they can do their grocery shopping and making it at the same time. Okay. This next one we recently did, just this year, our C Key branch is one of our. Oldest and busiest branches in a tough demographic where there's a lot of seniors, people are just used to going over the counter.

But it's like a bowling alley. There's no privacy. The lines were going outside the door and we, on the right hand side, is a picture of their break room. This branch had staffing challenges a couple years ago, so I asked them like. What's happening, like where you guys interview them, they're like, oh, we interviewed them in this kitchen.

I'm like, no wonder if if I'm Gen Z millennial and I go over here, I'm not gonna wanna work here. So there's an employee engagement piece, a recruiting tool piece where when you redesign, refresh your branch good things happen. Now, this is what we have here. We went from zero to four ITM machines. No offices, the four private office spaces, two engagement centers.

And we redid their break room back here and apparently they were cooking pancakes and forgot to invite me last week to the branch. But they're excited. They love the space. Member sentiment is getting there, but we're already at about 50% adoption, which is incredible. And now I'll hand over to Kelsey to talk about strategies

Kelsey Young, Hawaii State Federal Credit Union: for success.

All right, so everybody wants to know what made it work. Everybody wants to hear the success stories, the biggest success stories that you have really is. The leadership and choreography. The first though is that we really look at the branch layout. So this is our headquarters branch that we opened two years ago.

It's a branch and a lobby. We have two entrances on two sides, so we really look to see how do we engage the member with Aloha. We greet them as soon as on zone one and zone two, so our members walk into the branch. We're already greeting them, and like anything, leadership is the stepping stone for anything that is successful.

That is that mindset. So when we rolled out Salt Lake Branch we were a little disappointed with our adoption rate. We were about in the. Low teens, mid teens some months. But then really we had a change of leadership there and from 20% over six months and went all the way up to 60% of ITM adoption. And that was a huge success.

And now we continue, as Reid mentioned, we gave them a third ITM in that branch. And the other part is, the last two is really talking about how we engage with our members, and that's really with the friendly staff. But at the end of the day though, if the staff is not confident with the technology, they're not gonna support it.

They're not going to introduce it to the members. So that really ties back to our whole holistic approach, where with technology, we also have to support it with the back office. So it really is four major components that we have because if the members don't feel confident because of the staff, and the staff don't feel confident, they're not gonna want to talk about any of those.

Technology or really introduce the ITM.Kelsey Young, Hawaii State Federal Credit Union: The other piece that we did is always about the people. We have to invest into the people. And that's what we heard today too, is we rolled out what we call RSI, which as credit unions, we don't really talk about sales, but it's retail solutions. So we wanna be solution based. And how this was, is over a year we really talked about educating our members to get their buy-in for the team.

So we created vignettes or videos to show how to interact with members, how, what is the right way, how do you overcome obstacles? And like Reid mentioned, there's gonna people that don't necessarily want to use the ITM, but the thing that we try to teach our staff is really try the moment you try and you continue to try, the more confident you're gonna get.

But if you don't introduce the technology to the member, they're not gonna want to even attempt to use it. 'cause they're probably afraid to use it.

The next piece is engagement. So we talked about engagement, and Reid is the spam guy, but we, in our Safeway branches or in our in-store branches, we do seasonal promotion. So earlier this year we went ahead and gave away. If you use the ITM, you. Enter to win a Yeti cooler bag. The other one, that's the spam guy, so he literally is the spam guy.

He's a good looking guy up there. But for our anniversary of our headquarters branch, we actually gave away 200 spam mu bees at our KA McKee and our headquarters branch, and it sold out like that. The other one, when we talk about engagement, so just recently, last month, we actually. No longer have ATMs within our branch network.

We are all on core ITMs in all of our branch network. So we changed our model of how we engage with our members through the branch, through the retail space, and to really celebrate that for engagement, we partnered with ESPN in Honolulu to give away a round trip to University of Hawaii. Playing at UNLV this Friday for the football game, and if anybody knows Hawaii and Vegas, everybody wants to go to Vegas.

So that's really was a key point for us of how we engage our members and the pieces that we don't just do it one time once you install it. We want to continue to make it fun, so we continue to enhance and engage with our members to make it so it's not just a piece of metal sitting in our branches for them to do their transactions.

But we also have member feedback and everything, not everybody likes it but the three points that I want to talk about for sure is the green points is that every good comment that we get is always talking about how they loved the staff. The staff was friendly, the staff was helpful. The staff greeted me with aloha.

That's the key component of our success was really about the staff. But even if they had some defectors or people who are not necessarily the most keen about the ITMs, they always talk about even if the staff was there, I don't like the technology. I don't want to be forced to use it. I don't want, the biggest pushback that we get until this day, over six years, that we continuously get is I don't want to use the ITM because I don't want the tellers to lose their job.

But what we share with the members and when, whenever we do branch opening, all of our leadership, we're always there and we hear the same comments every single time. And what we share with them is that we actually allow our staff to do more than just do the transaction. And when we rolled out Salt Lake Branch, this is a really a big success, was that when we had the change in leadership, they were actually one of our top performing branch with referrals.Kelsey Young, Hawaii State Federal Credit Union: The tellers didn't have to focus on doing the transaction. We all know, especially you know, operations in a branch. Did we post to the right account? Did we dispense the right amount? Did we withdraw the right amount? Was the check is the check in good status? The member didn't have to really have to talk to the member 'cause the member can really pick and choose what accounts they want so the staff can engage with them.

And if you solve, when our welcome video, all of our branches have laptops. So we are no longer tied to a workstation. They walk around the branch, engage with them. We're on the laptop, they can see the member's profile, and they can engage with them to see what products and what services we can actually offer them that meets the member's needs.

So that's the biggest part that we provided. The next of course, is data. We always want to know what is our adoption rate. So this is our four branches in our Safeway, our in-store branch. So the blue really is our branch transaction transactions that are done over the counter or traditionally, but you see a big, large proponent is the orange, which is our ITM transactions.

But what moved us to go to a 24 7 service for our members and taking out the ATMs was really because we see how the branch. At these four branch locations, members can bank at their convenience. With the ITMs, they can deposit and they can withdraw up to $10,000 to a palm authentication. So it really gives them more flexibility as well as they can make mortgage payments, they can do credit card payments, all of that, pretty much with the exception of an official check can done, can be done through the ITM.

So this really is better service for them rather than just depositing something or withdrawing $500 from A ATM. The other one that we talked about is our branch channel comparison. So for our transform branches, you can really see how earlier this year we have branch and ITM really segmented, but the percentages of ITM transactions versus branch transactions as of last month really flipped.

And within the last one we talk about is our common key branch is that branch went from no technology to technology with I four ITMs. Everything wireless and it really can really see the skyrocket where a member really has adoption. And this is the big component where our staff were the key to the success as well as the leadership.

They're the ones that really started with the aloha from the beginning to the end, but wrap it up with Reed.

Reid Hinaga, SVP & Branch Division Manager, Hawaii State Federal Credit Union: Thank you, Kelsey. So in conclusion, for digital adoption with Aloha, right? Aloha is not just a word, right? It can be a noun, it can be a verb, it can be an adjective, right? Having that aloha state of mind, right?

It really lives through the people, but also the physical spaces, right? That your branches are right. They should feel it as when they enter during the transaction and then after the transaction here. And of course, people are the key to adoption, right? There has to be some education, some engagement components.

And again, what we learn is that the engagement is not just the first week that you open the new branch or introduce a technology. It's something you have to be intentional about, whether it's quarterly, whether it's every month. We had such a great success with the Vegas giveaway that Kelsey talked about, so most likely we'll try to do something similar like that again.

And of course those cbs. But it has to gain ba buying at all levels. And some of our leadership that's been in transform branches, we've actually been promoting them quicker than people who are just in a traditional community branch. Our new regional manager was from the Salt Lake branch that Kelsey talked about.

She gets it, she's able to teach it, she's able to inspire others to do it. That's why we promoted her to this new position. And even from our management trainees up, they start, they're used to it from technology. So the expectation is as they rise up to new positions, higher positions they're gonna be well versed and able to train and execute to this.

And then failing to plan is planning to fail. It's, again, it's a lot of your internal partners, right? But from our perspective in the branch leadership, we have to be the voice of the people, the voice of the members in your branch, right? And we have to implement their feedback into the strategic plan that you roll out.

But then constantly look and evaluate, right? Whenever, see, we see numbers dip, right? That's when we reach out and try to not scold them, but just find out like, Hey, what's happening? Sometimes we'll get negative comments like Kelsey mentioned, and the comment is, I don't like that they keep asking me to use the ITM, and I put it back on the team.

I'm like, Hey, actually if you don't get negative comments, I don't know if you're asking the people, so at least I know you're asking, but let's work on like how you're asking. Or how you're trying to engage and move the member to the it end, because there's a point where you should have some maybe like emotional intelligence and be like, okay, don't worry about it.

Let me find another way to help you complete your transaction. Okay? On time. But thank you very much. If there's no questions we'll be here a little bit after. Thank you again for having us. I wish it was a shorter flight home, but again, such, so valuable being here, meeting all your great people, ALO.

Thank you.