UFCU piloted in a handful of branches, gathered feedback from frontline staff, and expanded only when the experience was ready. That patience is what made a 31 branch, 200-person rollout actually work.
Account opening dropped from 20 to 30 minutes to as little as 10. Multiplied across hundreds of staff and thousands of members, that time gives employees more room to focus on building real relationships.
Rather than adjusting their workflows to fit a rigid platform, UFCU worked with Narmi to get the customizations they actually needed. More than 10 enhancements were delivered in under six months.
Founded in 1936, UFCU has grown into a $4.3 billion credit union with 31 branches across Texas. The institution has expanded well beyond central Texas roots, but it continues to operate with a simple truth at its core: people are at the heart of everything they do.
Before 2024, opening an account at a UFCU branch took longer than it should have. Staff had to move between multiple systems to complete a single application, and on a normal day that process took anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. If a member wasn't sure what they needed, or if a staff member was newer to the role, it took even longer.
The slowness was frustrating on its own, but the bigger issue was what it cost UFCU in consistency. Each branch was piecing together the same workflow from different tools, which made it nearly impossible to standardize the experience across locations. Members in one branch could have a noticeably smoother experience than members in another, and that kind of inconsistency ran against everything UFCU stood for.
UFCU took a methodical approach. Rather than rolling out broadly from day one, they started with a pilot at ACC Highland in December 2024, expanded to Texas State's LBJ branch in January 2025, then continued adding branches as the platform was refined. At each stage, branch staff shared direct feedback with Narmi's product and engineering teams, and adjustments were made before moving forward.
Narmi's staff-led solution gave UFCU employees one place to manage the entire account opening process, with automation handling routine steps and a shared dashboard keeping applications visible and on track. By the time UFCU launched across all 31 branches in March 2026, the platform had been refined based on input from real employees across multiple branch types. More than 200 staff members completed role-based training, with separate tracks for Alloy reviewers and standard branch workflows, and most finished in under two weeks.
As UFCU expanded into new markets, the limitations of its legacy verification process became a real liability. For in-branch account opening, UFCU had been relying solely on ChexSystems for identity verification. As UFCU put, ChexSystems is useful for unpaid closures and inquiries from other financial institutions, but its identity verification capabilities fall well short of what a credit union operating in high-fraud markets actually needs.
UFCU’s Houston and Galveston branches made the gap impossible to ignore as they experienced increasing levels of fraudulent activity. With UFCU’s continued expansion in Houston, a market that ranks fourth in the nation for identity theft, the organization faced growing risk exposure. Manual processes were not fast enough or consistent enough to effectively identify and prevent fraud.
UFCU strengthened its account verification process by adding Alloy alongside its existing ChexSystems review. Integrated directly into the account-opening workflow, Alloy added an additional layer of identity verification and risk assessment, helping staff make more informed decisions with greater consistency. By automating routine reviews and surfacing higher-risk applications for closer evaluation, the solution enabled teams to work more efficiently while enhancing fraud prevention efforts.
UFCU serves a genuinely varied membership, including students, university faculty and staff, medical professionals, and coastal community members, each with their own set of needs. Their internal workflows reflect that reality, with multiple account types, compliance requirements, and branch-specific processes that needed to be refined to improve consistency and efficiency across the organization
The UFCU team spent much of 2025 gathering direct feedback from frontline staff and bringing specific requests back to Narmi's team. One non-negotiable was sales tracking. UFCU's branches run incentive programs that require tracking which accounts each staff member and branch opens, and without that capability, an org-wide rollout simply wasn't on the table. Rather than treating it as an edge case, Narmi prioritized it, and that kind of responsiveness carried through the entire process. More than 10 enhancements were delivered in under six months, and each one moved the platform closer to something UFCU could confidently put in front of every branch.
As the UFCU team put it: "Narmi is an elevator to allow us to do what we do best."
UFCU spent the last couple of years rebuilding how they open accounts, and the results show. But for UFCU, this was never just about account opening. The credit union is still expanding in Houston, still investing in financial education, and still building the kind of community presence they've maintained for nearly a century. With a stronger operational foundation under them, they have more room to focus on all of it.
GAFCU wanted to offer CDs in the CAO platform but didn’t want to have to manually send CD receipts every time an account was opened. This labor-intensive method inhibited staff from capitalizing on a channel crucial for deposit growth. Narmi's platform customizations provided a solution: automated delivery of personalized CD receipts to each account holder via email.
Asset Size: $300M
Location: Paramus, NJ
Products: Consumer Digital Banking, Digital Account Opening
GAFCU encountered difficulties promoting additional product offerings, particularly with their CD accounts. They came to Narmi for a solution that could help them effectively cross-sell their CD products.
Narmi's platform customization streamlines operations for GAFCU’s staff, and will enable GAFCU to significantly reduce manual efforts spent on tracking and sending CD receipts.
Grasshopper’s support team historically used Zendesk to manage their client support operations. However, ensuring client conversations on the Narmi support portal remained consistent with the conversations on Zendesk took valuable time away from their support team. Using Narmi’s platform customizations, Narmi built a full integration between Zendesk and the Narmi support portal, saving Grasshopper’s support team over 30 hours each week on manual tasks.
Asset Size: $820MM
Location: New York, NY
Products: Business Digital Banking
Grasshopper recognized the need to optimize their workflow by automating the connection between Zendesk and the Narmi messaging platform. This desire stemmed from a commitment to enhance operational efficiency and streamline processes.
Through this integration, Grasshopper can take full advantage of their existing tech stack. Reclaiming the 30 hours it took to copy messages from Zendesk to the Narmi platform allows Grasshopper’s support team to redirect their focus towards high-impact initiatives and delivering exceptional client experiences.
UFCU’s team was experiencing a high volume of applications that needed to be manually flagged, and they wanted to incorporate a tool into their risk management stack that could help relieve that burden. In partnership with Narmi, UFCU adopted NeuroID to automatically flag and decision for risky applications and send staff notifications when there are incidences of fraudulent activity. Now, UFCU’s staff can sit back and relax knowing that NeuroID is automatically decisioning on those risky applications, even when there’s a fraud attack.
“There were 33 applications that were declined outright on Sunday when otherwise it would have gone to Review or Accepted. This addresses Synthetic fraud which is difficult to track.”
- Russell Shugart
Asset Size: $4.5B
Location: Austin, TX
Products: Consumer Account Opening
UFCU was experiencing fraudulent applications moving to “review” or “approved” status. These applications required constant manual review, causing their staff to be bogged down and overwhelmed when there was a fraud attack.
With NeuroID catching risky applications and automatically decisioning them, UFCU’s staff saves hours every week. In the short time since implementation, Russell calculated that NeuroID saves more than 40 hours a month in manual review time and helps UFCU avoid charge-offs averaging $400 per fraudulent account. With Narmi’s close integration with NeuroID, UFCU can more reliably trust application decisions, giving them a safety net when experiencing intense fraud attacks.
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