Q2 Innovation Studio @ CU Build 2022

Q2 Innovation Studio was a sponsor of CU Build, a weekend build-a-thon for the Symitar community, hosted in Dallas.

We have been proud to be a sponsor and participant of CU Build for the past few years. Originally held at American Airlines Federal Credit Union in 2019, the event had to be held virtually the last two years, and so we were excited to be able to attend in person this year at the Four Points Sheraton Conference Center in Dallas, TX.

This unique build-a-thon drew visitors from all over the country, including credit union developers, CUSO's, and vendors like Q2. Competitors were divided into 10 teams at random, and had 36 hours to develop the most innovative and useful idea they could think of. Teams brainstormed technical solutions, as well as marketing and business plans, putting their designs into code and making use of Symitar and the ecosystem of tools available.

At least four of the teams in the competition made use of Q2 SDK and the Q2 Developer environment, and with a live Symitar core available in the cloud, a few of the teams built entire end-to-end solutions using Q2 and Symitar.

Two teams presented solutions that especially drew our attention.

The team "Mavericks" built a savings solution called "GPS: Goal-Powered Savings", in which credit union members would establish savings goals with automatic transactions to fund their goals. The team made heavy use of the Q2 Caliper SDK and digital banking platform, with a user interface for setting up and managing goals, plus a backend control panel in Symitar, and custom reports and notifications through Salesforce. We felt that it was an impressive solution, demonstrating how Q2 Caliper SDK can be used to build powerful integrations with Symitar that work seamlessly in online banking, so that users can get more out of their banking relationship.

The team "Pay Less" developed a program called "Save More", designed to encourage credit union members of lower means to be able to save more (of course!) and see their savings grow. The solution used a combination of "rounding up" debit card transactions and award points for paying bills and other savings milestones. The tech stack included a Tecton widget and enrollment process through Q2 Digital Banking, a Symitar back end data structure, and a Salesforce.com dashboard. Members are notified of their progress on the Q2 platform via a helpful widget on their home dashboard.

The Save More project ultimately won first place at the event, with the judges commending the team's emphasis on serving the underserved low income communities, and the full suite of technical solutions to that end. The CU Build committee has agreed to engage with the Pay Less team over the next year to help them bring their vision to life as a real product for credit unions to deliver to their members.

We at Q2 agree that the work of this team was impressive and their goals align with our mission of Building Stronger, more Diverse Communities by Stregthening their Banking Institutions. We look forward to working with CU Build and the winning team to help them as they move forward with bringing this innovative product to market.

The event was a success and we hope to be a sponsor of CU Build and support the mission of the Symitar and credit union community for years to come.