What Actually Gets AI Buy-In at a Credit Union

Ankur Patel interviews Youssi Farag, CFO at WEOKIE Federal Credit Union.📩 Subscribe to the Main Street AI Newsletter: https://multimodal.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=podcastWEOKIE Federal Credit Union is a $1.5B institution where Youssi's seat covers finance and accounting, compliance, and commercial lending all at once. Her argument is that AI only sticks when you start from a real problem, put IT, compliance, legal, and the frontline in the same room, and hold vendors to a date instead of accepting "it's on the roadmap."Guest: Youssi Farag, CFO, WEOKIE Federal Credit UnionHost: Ankur Patel, CEO & Founder, Multimodal0:00 Introduction: Meet Youssi0:44 What Youssi owns at WEOKIE1:51 Community bank speed vs credit union scale4:43 How technology decisions actually get made6:24 Where AI landed first: fraud, risk, and reporting8:59 Buy, build, or partner11:39 Budgeting for AI13:44 Budget discipline with mid-year pivots16:31 AI in consumer vs commercial lending19:33 How far along WEOKIE is21:39 Member-facing AI and measuring what changed23:35 Vendor green flags and red flags26:17 Structuring an experiment you can pivot out of28:51 Reward seeking vs risk mitigation31:28 Leading vs fast following33:29 Getting the team bought in34:45 What success looks like in three years36:12 Closing