Today, more than 75% of people in the United States access their bank accounts via online portals or mobile apps.¹ With digital banking technology, consumers can monitor transactions, check balances, deposit checks, and more in minutes, from anywhere. Behind the scenes, these modern financial interfaces are powered by a critical digital banking infrastructure. 

Legacy solutions lag behind

While the largest financial institutions have allocated significant resources to developing in-house digital banking solutions, the rest of the financial ecosystem has historically depended on third-party software solutions. This includes community-focused organizations like regional banks and credit unions, which together account for ~39% of assets across the entire banking industry and 97% of banks in the U.S.² As member-owned, non-profit organizations, credit unions charge lower fees for services and commonly serve groups like schools or labor organizations. 

The majority of credit unions and small banks rely on legacy third-party banking solutions to provide digital experiences to their members. These interfaces are typically built on on-prem technology that was developed more than two decades ago. Moreover, legacy banking providers have prioritized scaling via large acquisitions versus product innovation. As a result, legacy digital banking solutions routinely suffer from issues with reliability, performance, and flexibility, resulting in poor user experiences and lower rates of adoption by credit unions and regional banks. 

Democratizing the next-gen of digital banking

After decades in the fintech and banking industries, Jeff Chambers made it his mission to bring cloud-native software and improved user experiences to the community banks and credit unions that were critically underserved. In 2016, he launched Lumin Digital, a digital banking solution designed to empower every financial institution—regardless of type or size— to offer modern digital banking. 

Lumin’s software sits on top of existing core banking processors, connecting via API to more than 200 third-party solutions via Lumin’s Partner Ecosystem, including BioCatch, SavvyMoney, Atomic, and Glia. By providing a conduit to core processors, Lumin enables credit unions and regional banks to provide the functionality and flexibility most requested by their customers. With Lumin, bank members who have grown accustomed to in-person branch visits can now review transaction history, make transfers and deposits, pay bills, and review financial health and credit scores through a modern, user-friendly interface. Lumin’s digital-first solutions give customers full control over their finances and transactions, reducing the need for branch visits and the burden on operations and customer support staff.

Lumin is built on a cloud-native, single tenant architecture that readily scales, improves data security, and is built for reliability. With 99.999% uptime, Lumin’s platform benefits from continuous software upgrades and feature enhancements, unlike legacy solutions that routinely go offline for hours to push upgrades. The result is an ultra-reliable solution that is trusted by 78 financial institutions across the United States today. 

One of the things that excited us the most during diligence is that every single Lumin customer we spoke with saw an acceleration in user growth after going live with Lumin. By providing best-in-class functionality and features to their members, credit unions saw better activation, retention, and, ultimately, revenue generation with Lumin. Financial institutions on the Lumin platform experience 2x asset and deposit growth and 8x the market share growth, compared to U.S. and competitor averages.

At NewView Capital, we’re proud to support companies defining the future of financial services, including Mercury, Modern Treasury, Nium, Paystand, Plaid, and, now, Lumin Digital. We believe that Lumin Digital is positioned to redefine digital banking for credit unions and regional banks through its cutting-edge platform for the modern financial landscape. Built to enhance user experiences, Lumin equips institutions with best-in-class infrastructure and prioritizes product innovation—a stark improvement to other solutions in the market. Lumin’s seamless integration capabilities empower financial organizations to build stronger relationships with their members while driving efficiency and growth. As the demand for innovative digital banking solutions grows, Jeff Chambers and the entire Lumin team are well-positioned to help create lasting value for financial institutions of all sizes.