Innovation Credit Union, like many organizations of its kind, has been working over the last few years to increase its digital presence.

Anyone who has purchased a new smartphone in the last few years, or attempted to contact a crown corporation, or navigate the now-extended tax season, will have at some point been urged by the person on the phone to take advantage of that company's online self-serve portal or smartphone app.

The technology is nothing new. But the COVID-19 pandemic has shown a large surge in its adoption by clients.

Daniel Johnson is the CEO of the Innovation Credit Union.

When asked, he reported that his organization has had more clients sign up for online banking in the first quarter of 2020 than they had in all of 2019 and that roughly half of their clients use their electronic services at least twice per month.

"We actually as a credit union compared to the financial services industry do quite well with having our members leverage those channels so when the pandemic came about it wasn't a large effort to use those channels more."

He says that they have been working for a number of years building out other channels other than in-person advice centres; self-serve, telephone and online options primarily.

"When the pandemic came about it wasn't a large effort to use those channels more; it certainly was a large effort by our teams to get things in order and work with their members.  But we felt that our continuity plan that we had in place really helped us navigate in the line with what the government was suggesting."

It was that detailed continuity plan that allowed them to quickly adapt to doing banking in a COVID-19 world.

Recently investing in technology allowed them to centralize and access all 400 staff in all of their locations, for example. Technology that was meant to position them for evolving consumer behaviour, suddenly became a lifeline when, early on in the pandemic, Innovation closed its doors and moved to an appointment-only model.

"We had that in place.  So that when we needed to increase the complement of our call center it was easy for us to access well over 100 staff where typically we usually have about 20."

That's helped to keep their response time reasonable as the number of calls has increased exponentially.

As for why Innovation chose to move to an appointment-only model, Johnson says that it was about safety, primarily; wanting to ensure that they had good control over the flow of traffic through their locations.

"Early on we were noticing that even though there were rules in place by the government and health experts, a lot of the traffic just weren't necessarily following those.  So we just wanted to make sure that we have the safety of our members in our staff at the forefront."

With the Re-open Saskatchewan Plan now underway, he believes that some of those new habits for clients are going to become the new normal, as things that were once considered awkward by some have now become daily features.

Video calling for a virtual appointment is something, for example, that even a few years ago most people would have only dabbled in.  It has seen a marked increase with words like Zoom and Microsoft Teams now part of everyone's lexicon.

"We see it being a pretty significant shift in membership behaviour. but we also want to remind everyone that we continue to have all of the options that we did pre-COVID so that our members can choose a channel that they prefer."

As for reopening their advice centres, he says that they are taking the careful approach; opening six locations to transactional services like deposits and withdrawals on May 11, 2020, and then proceeding from there as safety allows. They aim to open the remainder by May 19, 2020, while advice sessions will remain appointment only with virtual options available for the time being.

In all, Johnson gives credit to the membership for being flexible and adapting to the new technology as they have had to, as well as the staff for making it happen as seamlessly as it has for Innovation so far.