Modernizing to Better Serve the Community – Flinks + Lighthouse Credit Union

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Ontario’s newest credit union in over ten years, Lighthouse Credit Union (LCU) is a unique financial institution that is dedicated to serving, financing, and giving back to Toronto’s Jewish community, as well as the greater community at large. At the heart of LCU’s mission is the goal of becoming the go-to financial partner for their diverse members, ensuring that profits and resources are reinvested to foster communal growth and prosperity. 

In pursuit of this vision, Lighthouse Credit Union partnered with Flinks to transform the way LCU harnesses financial data to better serve their members. This collaboration enables LCU to leverage Flinks’ cutting-edge data aggregation and analytics capabilities, ensuring a more personalized and efficient banking experience. With Flinks’ expertise, LCU is set to enhance its decision-making processes, offer faster credit approvals, and provide a more robust financial ecosystem tailored to the unique needs of the Toronto Jewish community.

Challenges

• Finding a company with prebuilt connections, networks, and APIs to help build an all-new platform
• Creating a seamless transaction experience for members by integrating Canadian financial institutions into the LCU application
• Simplifying credit applications by offering document uploads 

Solutions

• Flinks’ wide range of offerings, including Upload and Connect, provided a better go-to-market option for LCU versus building from scratch 
• Flinks’ strong Canadian bank connections and reliability made integrations easy to implement into their application    
• Strong technical expertise and documentation provided by Flinks to support LCU as they continue to grow

Building a Reliable and Market-Ready Platform

When LCU first decided to build a platform to help streamline their product offerings, the plan was to build this platform in-house. Realizing how time-consuming, complex and expensive a task it is to create these elements from scratch, LCU sought the help of an experienced fintech partner, which is where Flinks came in. 

LCU’s primary focus was to work with a partner that could do all the heavy lifting for them, making Flinks’ prebuilt connections, strong network, and APIs the ideal solution for LCU. Flinks also provided customer support, documentation and consistent guidance throughout the process, ensuring that LCU had all the operational support they needed to successfully go to market with their products. 

Flinks’ bank integrations have provided LCU with a safe and reliable way to access members’ financial data, a critical component of their business operations. Having the right technical resources and proper product roadmap has made LCU’s integrations with Flinks seamless, allowing LCU to focus on developing new product offerings to better serve their community members. 

“Flinks’ solution has proven to be 100% reliable, which is critical in the financial industry for building customer trust and confidence.”

Lighthouse Credit Union

Enhancing Product Offerings

LCU currently offers competitive mortgages and GICs, with plans to soon offer a High Savings Account, business accounts, personal and business loans, and more. The integrations provided by Flinks have become essential to LCU’s business and product development plans. Flinks Connect, for example, enables LCU to safely access banking data, a fundamental aspect of LCU’s online platform. Without it, LCU’s business processes would require additional back-office support services, which would lead to increased costs and resources that could be better directed elsewhere.

LCU has also implemented Flinks Upload as part of their onboarding flow, allowing for a seamless and streamlined process for some credit granting applications. This is a quick and efficient way for applicants to submit necessary information, such as proof of income, credit history, and personal identification. This not only speeds up the application process but also reduces the chances of errors or omissions that could delay approval. Many tasks that previously required manual intervention are now fully automated, exceeding regulatory compliance requirements.

In today’s competitive financial marketplace, convenience is paramount. By offering their clients seamless and intuitive application options, LCU has also improved the customer journey and onboarding flow. This has contributed to their overall growth as they continue to see an increase in customer onboarding while building products tailored to their community’s needs. 

Support Throughout the Growth Journey

As a new financial institution in Canada, Flinks understood LCU’s growth stages and changing needs, providing support and solutions that were tailored to LCU’s situation. From the beginning, Flinks has treated LCU as a start up with the understanding that LCU’s capabilities, resources and needs on day one are very different than where they will be in year two, which has been critical to LCU successfully launching their solutions in the Canadian marketplace. 

For LCU, Flinks distinguished itself by offering exceptional customer support and a wealth of comprehensive documentation and guidance, making the decision to partner with them easy for LCU. These resources were not just add-ons but essential components that have helped guide LCU’s operations, ensuring a smooth transition and ongoing operational success. 

LCU knows they have a partner in Flinks that supports their journey every step of the way, providing the tools and assistance necessary to excel in their market. 

“The documentation and customer support Flinks provided was key to helping us launch, and their continued support will be critical to helping us grow.”

Lighthouse Credit Union

Key Takeaways

1. LCU has built a reliable and market-ready platform without the complexity and expense of creating it in-house by leveraging Flinks’ prebuilt connections, strong network and APIs. 

2. By enabling safe access to banking data and streamlining the application process, Flinks’ integrations have been essential to LCU’s business and product development plans. This has led to improved customer experience, increased onboarding, and growth in product offerings.

3. Flinks’ understanding of LCU’s growth stages and changing needs, along with their dedicated customer support and comprehensive guidance, have been an integral part of LCU’s successful launch in the Canadian marketplace. 

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