DIGITAL BANKING TRANSFORMATION FOR CREDIT UNIONS: HAVE YOU PUT ALL THE PIECES TOGETHER?
A new white paper from 2Oaks
Ask a credit union leader what a digital banking transformation involves and most will describe a platform. Choose a vendor, sign the contract, move members onto the new system. That answer is fine as far as it goes, but there’s a problem with how much it leaves out.
Ask a credit union leader what a digital banking transformation involves and most will describe a platform. Choose a vendor, sign the contract, move members onto the new system. That answer is fine as far as it goes, but there’s a problem with how much it leaves out.
For a growing number of Canadian credit unions, the job is no longer optional. When Central 1 transferred its Forge Digital and Engineering Assets to Intellect Design Arena, the inevitable winding down of Forge was set in motion forcing all existing Forge clients to decide what path to take toward their future. Every institution on that platform now has to select a new one and migrate to it, on a clock that is already running. Many mid-size credit unions are running an RFP right now. Others are still gathering quotes. Some have not started.
All of them face the same question, and it is not which platform to buy. It is whether they have thought through everything a platform change sets in motion: the data, the integrations, the testing, the website, the Open Banking and Payments considerations work that belongs in the same program. A digital banking transformation touches all of it at once.
That is the framing worth holding onto. As one of my partners likes to put it, the real question for a credit union board is simple: have you put all the right pieces of your puzzle together, or are you about to discover the missing ones in month four?
The Bottom Line
The Forge Platform exit from digital banking means most of the credit union clients have to migrate to a new platform inside a finite transition window that started in early 2025.
A digital banking transformation is a multi-stream program, not a single project. The platform is the part the vendor owns. Everything around it belongs to the credit union.
Open banking readiness and payments modernization are not separate future initiatives. They belong inside the same program, sequenced alongside the platform work to ensure market readiness.
For most Credit Unions, budget season is just around the corner. A credit union that wants a program funded and running in 2027 has to make decisions now.
The credit unions most exposed are the mid-size ones under about $7.5 billion in assets, because they carry the same scope as larger institutions without the internal capacity to do it alone.
It is more than a platform switch
The easiest way to get a transformation wrong is to treat it as one workstream. The platform migration is visible, it has a vendor, and it has a contract, so it gets the attention. The trouble is that the platform is the one part someone else is responsible for. The rest sits with the credit union.
Read a digital banking vendor contract closely and the split is stark. The vendor commits to the software, its configuration, and a support model. What the contract assumes is a client-side organization ready to make hundreds of decisions on data, integration, requirements, and sequencing. That work does not announce itself in the planning phase. It often surfaces later, when a requirement has no owner and a decision has no decider.
Map a transformation against the work it really contains and you see how many disciplines it spans at once. Data mapping and migration. Solution and architecture design. Integration across core and ancillary systems. Quality control and testing. Internal and External change management. The website that members log in through, which usually has to change as well, and too often gets treated as a marketing refresh rather than the migration workstream it is.
None of these can be run in isolation, and none of them are optional. That is the case for treating the whole thing as a program with real governance rather than a project with a go-live date. We made the same argument about the core system underneath in our guide on what every institution should settle before replacing a core: the expensive mistakes are the decisions that get deferred because no one has the capacity to own them.
The predictable stall points are rarely technical mysteries. They are ownership gaps. Integration requirements that cross three teams and belong to none. A Requirements Backlog that needs one accountable owner but is governed by a committee instead. We see the same pattern in merger integrations, and we wrote about why in our piece on common integration challenges. Programs rarely come apart over strategy or platform choice. They come apart because the conversions took longer than planned and no one owned the schedule honestly enough to say so while it could still be fixed.
There is also a layer of risk that hides beneath the platform itself, in the supporting systems that keep the institution running. We covered that in our look at the hidden risks of ancillary systems, and it is worth reading before scoping any migration.
This is the work our Program Delivery and Governance service exists to run: place experienced people inside the team, take the workstreams that need an owner, and keep the institution’s own staff at the wheel.
When we walk into these conversations, the credit unions that succeed are the ones that see the whole board before they move the first piece. The platform is maybe a third of the work. The other two thirds is what decides whether you go live on time.
Derrick Smith, Partner, 2Oaks Consulting
Do not forget open banking and payments modernization
A platform migration is a rare event. It is the one time in a decade a credit union has its hands inside this piece of the plumbing. That makes it the right moment to consider and build for two other inevitable shifts” Open Banking and Real-Time Payments.
Canada’s open banking framework is now law. Bill C-15, the Budget Implementation Act, 2025, No. 1, received Royal Assent on March 26, 2026, enacting the Consumer-Driven Banking Act. Phase 1 covers read access. Phase 2, which adds payment initiation, is targeted for mid-2027 and depends on the Real-Time Rail being operational.
Payments Canada’s Real-Time Rail is scheduled to begin launching in waves in the fourth quarter of 2026, with broader access following in 2027. Once an institution gains access, receiving real-time payments is mandatory.
Treating these as separate roadmaps is a common and expensive mistake. Read together, they describe a single set of changes in how money will move between Canadian businesses. A credit union modernizing its digital banking platform right now can build open banking and payments modernization readiness into the same program as companion streams, rather than standing up two more projects in eighteen months. We laid out the full case, and a practical sequence for the next twelve months, in our open banking and payments modernization series, beginning with Canada’s Open Banking Is Law: Its Payments Modernization Runway Is Shorter Than Most Credit Unions Think.
We are already seeing this in live procurements. Credit unions writing RFPs today are typically including open banking as a stream inside the broader transformation, not as a line item for later. The ones doing that will not have to reopen the program to bolt it on.
“In a machine-to-machine world, integration is the workflow. Payments and settlement follow what the software decides, and the institutions hardest to integrate with stop being part of the decision.”
Andrew Mills, Managing Partner, 2Oaks Consulting
That is my partner Andrew’s point, and it is most relevant for credit unions whose commercial strategy still rests on a portal. The channel is shifting toward the ERP and APIs. A transformation planned today should be planned with that in mind.
Timing matters, and budget season is coming
There’s a reason none of this can wait until the platform decision is made.
Most credit unions open their budget cycle in September and close it by late October. A program that is meant to be resourced and running in 2027 has to be scoped, costed, and approved inside that window. That means the thinking has to happen now, in the summer, not in the fall.
The transition clock is the other pressure. Central 1 announced its exit in October 2024 and completed the transfer of its Forge platform to Intellect Design Arena in early 2025, framing client moves to new platforms as taking place over the following few years. A full transformation, from selection through migration and stabilization, is commonly a twelve to twenty-four month effort. Line those two timelines up and the runway is shorter than it looks. Acting now, while there is room to sequence the work properly, is a materially different outcome from reacting later under time pressure.
Summer is an imperfect moment to publish a plan, with people moving in and out of vacation. It is also when a lot of decision-makers finally have room to read and think before the fall rush. If a transformation is on your horizon, this is the season to get the shape of it right.
If you want a second set of experienced eyes on that shape before you commit to a timeline, that is the work of our Strategic Advisory and Planning services.
What good looks like
We are twelve months into exactly this kind of program with a major Ontario credit union, and it is a useful picture of what a well-run transformation looks like from the inside.
The credit union was moving its retail and small business digital banking onto a new platform. The vendor brought the software. The credit union owned the program. The work in between needed more hands and more depth than the internal team could supply while simultaneously maintaining business as usual. So we embedded an experienced team of migration experts to work alongside the client’s staff, leading the workstreams that needed an owner and owning the requirements process where needed.
What that engagement shows is the ordinary shape of a transformation done properly, with nothing heroic about it: clear governance, phased delivery, the right streams identified early, and a partner who understands the credit union model well enough to translate between the vendor’s platform and the institution’s systems. The full account is in our engagement profile.
A clean go-live is only half the measure of success. The other half is whether the team is stronger after we leave than before we arrived. Data migration, quality assurance, solution design, and requirements leadership are all disciplines a credit union can build over the duration of a program and then keep. That is the model: come in to fill a defined gap, transfer the knowledge while we are there, and hand back the wheel.
“The credit unions that get this right are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who mapped the full sequence before they started, and brought in people who had run it before. That is the difference between a program that ships and one that slips.”
Derrick Smith, Partner, 2Oaks Consulting
Frequently asked questions
Why is digital banking transformation urgent for Canadian credit unions right now?
Central 1 has exited digital banking. It transferred its Forge and MemberDirect platforms, along with the engineering and service teams behind them, to Intellect Design Arena in early 2025, and every credit union on that platform now has to move to a new one. Central 1 has described those client transitions as happening over the next few years, so the window is finite and already open. Add the fact that a full transformation commonly runs twelve to twenty-four months, and that most credit unions set their budgets in September, and the decisions have to be made now for a program to be funded and running in 2027.
Is a digital banking transformation just a platform migration?
No. The platform is the part the vendor delivers. The credit union owns everything that connects it to the institution: data mapping and migration, integration across core and ancillary systems, requirements ownership, quality control and testing, change management, and the member-facing website. Programs stall on the workstreams that have no clear owner, not on the software. Treating the platform swap as the whole job is the most common way a transformation runs late.
How do open banking and payments modernization fit into a digital banking transformation?
They belong inside the same program. Canada’s Consumer-Driven Banking Act is now law, and the Real-Time Rail begins launching in waves in the fourth quarter of 2026. A platform migration is the natural moment to build open banking readiness and payments modernization in as companion streams, rather than launching them as separate projects a year later. Credit unions writing RFPs today are already including open banking as a stream inside the broader program.
What size of credit union is this most relevant for?
Mid-size institutions, roughly under $7.5 billion in assets, are the most exposed. They carry the same transformation scope as larger institutions but usually without the large internal IT teams to run it on their own. Very large credit unions tend to have those teams in-house. Smaller and mid-size ones tend to need experienced outside help to plan and lead the work, which is exactly where the risk and the opportunity concentrate.
What should a credit union do right now if it has not started?
Start with the shape of the program before the platform decision. Map every stream a transformation will touch, including open banking and payments, and be honest about which ones have an internal owner and which do not. Get the scope and a credible sequence in front of leadership in time for the September budget cycle. The institutions that struggle are usually the ones that scoped the platform and discovered the rest of the program in flight.
How can 2Oaks help with a digital banking transformation?
We have run these programs from inside credit unions and banks across North America, on the major platforms, and we sequence the platform, integration, open banking, and payments work as one program rather than several. Our model is to embed experienced practitioners inside your team, lead the workstreams that need an owner, and transfer the capability as we go, so your team is stronger when we leave. If you are running an RFP, gathering quotes, or still deciding where to begin, our Program Delivery and Governance and Strategic Advisory and Planning services are the place to start. Talk to a practitioner, not a pitch deck. Get in touch.
ABOUT 2OAKS
2Oaks Consulting is a North American technology advisory firm serving banks, credit unions, insurers, and wealth managers. Our partners are former CIOs and technology executives who advise from the inside out. Learn more at 2oaks.ca.
Source for Central 1’s digital banking exit: Central 1 and Intellect Design Arena Ltd. conclude operating partnership transaction, Central 1 Credit Union, March 3, 2025.