Vantis credit union is taking its customers a big high-tech step forward by teaming up with MTS Allstream Inc. to let staff and members converse by means of videophone calls.

The Winnipeg-based credit union’s initiative is something many people have seen only on The Jetsons, the futuristic cartoon show of the 1960s.

Inside special kiosks, cameras will enable credit union members to have face-to-face conversations, albeit by means of a video screen, with loans officers and call-centre personnel if they wish to apply for new loans or get information about the latest investment products or banking activities.

Vantis will soon begin testing kiosks at three of its branches and at two MTS buildings. The plan is to launch the service at all Vantis branches and elsewhere around Christmas.

Vantis recently announced its intention to merge with the Assiniboine and Astra credit unions, both based in Manitoba, and the plan will be voted on in the fall.

“It’s the first of its kind in the [banking] world that we know of,” says Michel Audette, Vantis president and CEO, and incoming CEO of the new Assiniboine Credit Union, which will be the moniker of the merged entity. “We’re marrying a whole bunch of technologies, including document-sharing and text messaging on a teleconferencing platform.”

In addition to the video screens, each 3.7-square-metre kiosk will come equipped with a keyboard, allowing both parties to view documents and forms simultaneously. Members will even be able to sign important papers electronically, Audette says, noting the goal is for the kiosks to increase revenue and membership by 15%.

Perhaps not surprising, the Jetsons-esque initiative is geared to ward Vantis’s younger customers, who are better versed in technology than older generations.

“The kids will embrace the technology. We need to be there. If we’re not, we’ll miss that market share,” Audette says. “[Younger customers] will do their banking and communicating through technology. This is right up their alley.”

Audette adds he is not inferring that the rest of Vantis’s members are Luddites. In fact, because Vantis was created several years ago with the merger of the Hy-Line and Decibel credit unions, which exclusively served employees of Manitoba Hydro and MTS, respectively, members have a “very high affinity” for new technology, he says.

Robert Warren, director of the Asper Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Manitoba, says although such technology has been recently available in other sectors, such as retail, its use in banking services is cutting-edge. “This is an innovative and worthwhile use of the technology. It’s a great convenience tool,” he says.

Security shouldn’t be a concern because of encryption, Warren says: “With the video screens, you get a visual ID of the person, making it tougher to commit fraud.”

Warren is not surprised that a credit union, and not a bank, was the first to come up with such an innovation. “Credit unions have always been at the forefront of technological developments,” he says. “They were the ones that first brought out ATMs in Canada back in the 1970s.”

Audette says everyone on the credit union’s front lines will be trained to provide service to kiosk-using members. The technology will also better enable Vantis to serve its rural locations, which have smaller staffs and lack the financial services specialists available at urban branches, he says. IE