Velera’s Chuck Fagan: ‘Speed to Member Impact’ Is the Only KPI That Matters for Credit Unions

Here’s a way to think about where credit unions stand as 2026 unfolds: the mission hasn’t changed, but the clock has gotten a lot louder.

Members aren’t debating whether their credit union cares about them. They’re asking how fast it can do something about their situation. The rent increase that ate their savings buffer, the car payment that repriced upward, the grocery bill that quietly became the second-biggest line item in their budget. The institutions that answer quickly will keep those members. The ones that don’t will watch them drift toward whoever can.

Chuck Fagan, president and CEO of Velera, which provides payments and technology infrastructure to roughly 4,000 credit unions, framed it without much cushioning in a conversation with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“Speed to member impact, from concept through the whole cycle—pricing, everything to market—needs to be on that KPI (key performance indicator) list front and center,” Fagan said. Not tucked into a quarterly review. Not behind net promoter scores and loan-to-share ratios. Front and center.

When the Name Itself Is a Problem

Before getting to execution, Fagan surfaced something more fundamental, and arguably more uncomfortable. The term “credit union” has a branding problem with the generation credit unions need most.

Younger consumers, millennials and Gen Z, grew up watching the 2008 financial crisis dismantle their parents’ financial lives. They saw foreclosures, maxed-out cards, and a system that seemed to reward recklessness. The word “credit,” Fagan said, “kind of has been a negative.”

That’s not a minor PR inconvenience. It’s a headwind baked into the institution’s identity. When your name triggers suspicion in the demographic you’re trying to recruit, everything downstream—marketing, onboarding, product positioning—has to work harder to compensate. It means credit unions can’t just show up with great rates and expect trust. They have to earn it faster and more visibly than they’re used to.

Affordability Isn’t a Theme. It’s the Whole Story

The backdrop for all of this is an affordability crunch that’s reshaping what members want from their credit union. It’s no longer primarily about getting access to credit. It’s about surviving with it.

Fagan pointed to housing and auto costs as the twin pressure points that cascade through everything else. “The affordability aspect, and not only getting a home, but being able to maintain it” is dominating how members think about their finances. When someone’s mortgage or car payment absorbs more of their income, every other financial decision gets compressed.

Webster added a layer: policy debates around interchange fees and credit pricing rarely account for how interconnected the system is. Pull one thread—cap an interchange fee, regulate a rate—and it tugs on rewards programs, fraud protections and ultimately credit access itself. The people making the rules, she suggested, don’t always understand the machine they’re adjusting.

Financial Education That Isn’t a Brochure In the Lobby

Credit unions have always talked about financial education. What’s changing is that the ones paying attention have stopped treating it as a community-service checkbox and started building it into the product experience.

Fagan described tools that show members exactly where their money went, what’s coming in versus going out, and how different choices would ripple forward. He called it scenario planning at a consumer level. The same kind of modeling a CFO uses, scaled down to a household trying to figure out whether they can absorb a rate adjustment on their car loan without missing a utility payment.

This is where speed to member impact starts to get concrete. A dashboard that shows a member they’re on a collision course with their budget before they miss a payment is fundamentally different from a collections call after. The first one is a credit union doing its job. The second is damage control.

The Clock Doesn’t Start When You Think It Does

Fagan was pointed about what “speed” really means. It’s not just moving fast. It’s moving fast on a foundation that’s ready.

“Your clock doesn’t even start ticking until you’ve got the data right,” he said. Meaning: a credit union that rushes a product to market on messy data hasn’t achieved speed. It’s achieved the appearance of speed. Real velocity requires clean infrastructure underneath. And then it requires that whatever gets shipped is something members actually adopt.

“You’re not going to impact a member if they don’t use your service,” Fagan said.

Webster underscored the gap between ambition and execution. Many credit unions want to move faster, but not all have the infrastructure to do it. And that gap, between intent and outcome, is where members lose patience and leave.

Smaller CUs Feel It First and Hardest

If speed is the test, smaller credit unions are taking it with fewer resources and less margin for error. They can’t build in-house the way a top 25 bank can. They have to rely on partners, and that means FinTechs.

Fagan described the tension clearly: FinTechs push for rapid adoption. Credit unions push for regulatory discipline and member trust. Finding the overlap, where speed meets safety, is the operating challenge for most of the industry right now. Get it right and you keep pace. Get it wrong and you either move too slowly to matter or too recklessly to be trusted.

BNPL as a Case Study in Doing It Right

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is a useful lens for how this plays out in practice. The market has exploded. Members want it. The question for credit unions is whether they chase the trend or shape it.

Velera’s approach, Fagan said, is post-transaction BNPL tied to a member’s existing credit line, not a new line layered on top. The difference matters. Stacking credit is how people get buried. Using the capacity they already have, within a structure that’s already underwritten, is how you give members flexibility without manufacturing risk.

“It is here to stay,” Fagan said of BNPL. And among younger members especially, it’s becoming table stakes. The credit unions that figured it out early won’t just retain those members. They’ll have proven they can move fast and responsibly at the same time.

The 2026 Scoreboard

Fagan’s message was consistent from start to finish: the traditional financial metrics—loan growth, asset size, delinquency rates—still matter. But they don’t tell you whether your institution is moving fast enough to stay relevant.

“Speed to member impact” is moving into the top tier of how credit union leaders are judged. “That measurement is going to encompass the credit union’s aptitude around innovation, their efficiency to get things to market, and choosing the right partners,” he said.

Translation: in 2026, it won’t be enough to have a strategic plan. The question is whether a member felt the difference before the quarter ended.