Like many credit unions flush with pandemic-era deposits, ELGA Credit Union had a pile of money to loan from 2021 through 2023.
Since then – just like many credit unions – originations and balances have fallen at ELGA, based near Flint, Mich. ($1.8 billion in assets, 109,016 members).
Zach Eychaner, ELGA's vice president of digital experience, said the credit union has started using an artificial intelligence service to find and fix the problems.
"Obviously we're trying to tackle that however we can," Eychaner said.
In 2023, ELGA joined a Filene Research Institute program in which a group of credit unions join together to test five to seven fintechs over 12 months. Afterward, the credit unions compare notes to see how well each performed and what they would like to change.
ELGA got paired up with a fintech called Vertice AI, which was founded in 2021 by some SAS tech wizards in Chapel Hill, N.C., to provide AI-powered marketing solutions to credit unions and community banks.
Eychaner described the initial ELGA-Vertice AI mission a "unicorn chase": Finding a way to make indirect auto loan borrowers more engaged with the credit union. Members gained through indirect lending are notorious for having no other product with the credit union. They tend to roll in and roll out with their auto loans.
Expectations were not high for the A-B testing.
So ELGA folks were impressed when the Vertice AI-designed program increased the percentage of members opening a checking account or some other product from near zero to 0.8%, while the control group got nearly none.
"It was amazing," Eychaner said. To be clear, this test completed in late 2024 did not reveal a path to member engagement glory for the credit union. "It's where we want to spend our time and your resources because there's just not a lot of 'there' there," Eychaner said. "But it proved the concept for us."
The credit union decided it wanted to lean into Vertice AI's approach for a challenge that seemed more promising: Goosing its auto lending. ELGA contracted with Vertice AI full time in 2025.
ELGA's car loan portfolio grew at annual clip of close to 10% or better from 2015 through 2021. In 2022, the portfolio grew a whopping 42%, but growth slowed to 5% in 2023 and actually fell 8% in 2024 – something highly unusual for credit unions historically, but the norm for 2024.
Last year, ELGA and Vertice AI launched a "90 day no pay" auto loan campaign.
They found the AI-targeted group was nearly three times more likely to take out a loan as the non-AI targeted group. Overall, ELGA added $5.8 million in auto loans with an average balance of $26,847.
The targeted group also demonstrated stronger overall financial engagement, opening more than double the number of additional products compared to members who were only exposed to billboards, radio and other mass-media advertising.
However, while the AI-assisted campaign helped with car lending, the credit union's balance of new and used cars still fell 0.7% in 2025, which, again, was close the national pattern.
Now other campaigns are in the works. Eychaner said ELGA team members get on calls with the folks at Vertice AI every two weeks to go over data and campaigns being planned or in progress.
"It's not just a platform that we use," Eychaner said. "Their whole team supports us along so they really are an extension of us."
Mitch Rutledge, CEO of Vertice AI and one of its founders, said the company uses AI to help credit unions and community banks target the best prospects for new services. Then it helps them find the best routes to reach them with the right language.
Credit unions have been targeting in some form since the dawn of the movement.
But Rutledge said doing proper targeting consumes large amounts of staff time and data across many departments for a one-time-use campaign.
AI helps credit unions create a campaign to encourage certificate deposits one month, auto loans the next, and home equity loans after that while using a fraction of the people and time required without AI, he said.
"We can't take all of the smart people and lock them into a room" for every campaign, Rutledge said.
Same goes for copy writing.
"We're leveraging AI to create much more personalized content that is still on brand with the credit union," he said. "We load in the brand voice that they have. We load in all the product attributes."
And then the credit union and Vertice AI experts ask the program to create different copy for different demographics, allowing the credit union to send different pitches for a savings product to 18-year-olds and 65-year-olds.
Rutledge said "the vast majority" of its current customers are credit unions, which is where Vertice AI got its start. It is now starting to gain customers among community banks.
The price? "Here's what I'll say: Less than the cost of a data scientist. It's going to be less than you trying to hire and build it yourself for sure."
Contact Jim DuPlessis at Jim.DuPlessis@arc-network.com.
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