FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Best Innovation Group is First to Certify Amazon Alexa Skills
for Credit Union Voice Banking Transactions.
Launch at partner Enrichment Federal Credit Union enables members to
conduct a wide array of transactions through Amazon devices
Best Innovation Group (BIG), a credit union innovation catalyst, today announced the certification of its Amazon Alexa voice banking skill. Enrichment Federal Credit Union, a $456 million institution based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with 42,000 members and 9 offices, has become the first credit union to roll out the Financial Interaction Voice Experience (FIVE) banking skill.
BIG has certified the first Alexa skill specifically designed to allow credit union members to perform transaction-based functions such as executing transfers between accounts, making loan payments, and accessing balances for checking, savings and loans, and checking account histories - all using voice commands secured by a single sign-on.
The breadth of BIG’s financial institution skill exceeds any others available on Amazon’s skill store to date. While others allow customers to query for general information such as loan rates or credit card balances, BIG’s FIVE skill enables users to access all of their credit union accounts - spanning checking and savings, car loans, mortgages, and credit cards. It also offers member engagement capabilities such as educational audio clips on critical topics such as security and financial literacy.
“We’ve been perfecting the user experience for months, understanding what members want to accomplish and how they speak about these activities” explained BIG CEO and co-founder John Best. “BIG has created extensive libraries of phrases for the skill and made it easy for credit unions to add more phrases - all with the goal of customizing and optimizing the experience for members.”
BIG has built these Alexa Voice Service capabilities into its FIVE platform. By centralizing many common commands on the platform, these features can more easily be extended to subsequent products. Therefore, FIVE positions financial institutions to rapidly add new features as well as additional voice services as demand dictates.
Growth in the number of skills available from Amazon for Alexa has been swift. In February 2017 Amazon announced that the number of skills had increased 300% to 10,000. By July 2017 it had grown to over 15,000 skills. But access to financial accounts is a sensitive area and only a handful of skills have been certified for these tasks. BIG is among a select group of companies to create an extensible skill specifically for financial institutions to allow access to their clients. And Enrichment FCU is the first credit union to deploy the FIVE skill to its members.
“Artificial intelligence is the most promising new technology available. We are excited to be the first credit union to implement BIG’s Amazon Alexa skill which will enable our members to complete financial transactions via artificial intelligence – making financial solutions easier,” said John Merritt, CIO of Enrichment. “It is as easy as ‘Alexa – transfer $100 from my checking account to my savings account’ ”.
“Our goal is to provide members with seamless banking transactions 24/7 worldwide,” said Craig Peters, Enrichment’s CEO. “We are proud to provide our members with a technologically convenient method of accessing their accounts, anytime and anywhere, while still providing a personal touch with a high level of account security.”
For more information on BIG’s solutions, please contact Elizabeth Robins, Product Director at 469.458.6386 or email sales@big-cu.com.
About Best Innovation Group
Founded in 2014, Best Innovation Group (BIG) is an innovation catalyst created to provide clients with the insights and resources to quickly implement digital solutions and adopt cutting-edge technologies. BIG provides research and development services in the form of written research and prototypes, and is constantly searching for new technological solutions to help credit unions grow. BIG leverages the aggregate scale of its clients to create relationships with large entities that would not otherwise engage in the credit union market. For more information, visit: www.big-fintech.com
About Enrichment FCU
Enrichment Federal Credit Union, formerly K-25 Federal Credit Union, based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is one of the largest credit unions in the state with over 42,000 members, nine area offices and assets of over $456 million. The credit union has been providing a complete range of low-cost and convenient financial services since 1950, when it was chartered to serve the employees of the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion plant, which was part of the Federal Government’s Manhattan Project. Unlike most financial institutions, Enrichment is locally owned and operated by the members. For more information contact Enrichment Federal Credit Union at 865-482-0045 or online at www.enrichmentfcu.org.