Twenty-seven years from the counter to the product committee

Mandate

Turn a heavily configured app into one product that works for every member of every client, make it accessible, build small-business banking and prepare the platform for consumer-permissioned data access.

Outcomes

• Moved 74 credit unions from separately themed apps to one design system; screen-reader task completion in member testing rose from 58% to 91%.
• Moved 94% of third-party data traffic from stored-password sign-ins to token connections by June 2026; automated sign-ins fell 81%.
• Launched a thirteen-week cash-flow view used monthly by 41% of active business members at 31 credit unions.
• Kept 73 of 74 client credit unions through the design-system restriction; one left at its 2024 renewal.

Decisions in context

I joined Lanternfield to turn a platform that had grown by saying yes to every client into a product with clear limits. When I arrived, each of our 74 credit unions ran a differently configured app, accessibility depended on each client's choices and almost a third of sign-ins came from software rather than members. My remit covers product management, design, research, accessibility and content for consumer and business digital banking; engineering reports to our chief technology officer, with whom I share the roadmap. The main decisions since 2022 have been the shared design system and its limits on customisation, token connections with the Connected apps page, and the business cash-flow view. I present quarterly to the board's product and risk committee and publish a decision log to every client credit union, including the requests we have declined. I am an officer of Lanternfield, not a director, and I hold no role at any client.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; delivering the 2027 roadmap, including small-dollar credit presentation and examination evidence for client credit unions.

Mandate

Rebuild the consumer mobile app and online account opening, then redesign checking accounts and their fees.

Outcomes

• Raised the share of new checking accounts opened digitally from 19% to 46%.
• Redesigned overdraft and returned-item fees; fee complaints fell 64% and losses on overdrawn accounts fell from US$9.8m to US$6.1m.
• Introduced a projected end-of-day balance showing pending items for 1.3 million checking accounts.
• Built a payment-deferral request flow that handled about 41,000 requests in 2020.

Decisions in context

Corriston hired me to modernise a mobile app and online account opening that customers rated poorly and branches worked around. I led product, design and analytics for consumer digital banking and for checking and savings products, reporting to the head of consumer banking. The first two years went on rebuilding account opening and the app's balance and payment screens. That work exposed the gap between the balance customers saw and the one the bank charged against, and it led to the overdraft redesign of 2020, which I took to the board's risk committee with the revenue effect stated plainly. During the pandemic my team also launched deposit-hold notices and a payment-deferral request flow. I left when Lanternfield offered the chance to make the same kind of decisions for many credit unions at once, which drew me back to the institutions where I had started.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Lanternfield to lead product for a shared platform serving 74 credit unions.

Mandate

Bring the rewards programme's effect on cardholders under measurement, and rebuild the servicing app and statement.

Outcomes

• Ended points expiry for open accounts in good standing; rewards complaints fell 72%.
• Reduced voluntary attrition among active rewards accounts from 9.4% to 7.9%.
• Rebuilt the statement so that the rewards balance and redemption options appeared on one page.
• Added testing with cardholders who use assistive technology to every servicing app release.

Decisions in context

I took over a rewards programme whose costs finance understood well and whose effect on cardholders nobody had measured. My remit covered rewards design, redemption, the card servicing app and statements for 3.2 million active rewards accounts. Our analysts could tell me the value of each redemption option but not who was losing points or why. I introduced quarterly reviews of complaints and redemption by cardholder group, ended points expiry for open accounts in good standing in 2015 and rebuilt the statement so that the rewards balance, any expiry for closed accounts and the redemption options appeared together. I also brought testing with cardholders who use screen readers and magnification into every release of the servicing app. I left when Corriston offered me deposit products, because I wanted to work on the everyday accounts where most customers' surprises begin.

Reason for the move

Moved to Corriston Bank to lead deposit products and consumer digital banking.

Mandate

Move card disputes and routine servicing from telephone and post to online channels, and reduce disputes the product caused.

Outcomes

• Built online dispute filing, card replacement and travel notices; a third of disputes were filed online by 2011.
• Cut disputes caused by unrecognised merchant names by 38% through work with merchant services on statement descriptors.
• Introduced testing with cardholders who use screen readers after a 2009 test exposed an unusable dispute form.
• Reduced the average time to resolve a non-fraud dispute from 41 days to 26.

Decisions in context

This role moved me from running dispute operations to designing the products that produced disputes. Quillmore handled about 1.4 million card disputes and servicing requests a year, almost all by telephone and post. I led a small product team that built online dispute filing, card replacement and travel notices, and I worked with merchant services to improve the merchant names shown on statements, the largest single cause of disputes that were not fraud. I studied human-computer interaction part time during these years, in the evenings, and our 2009 test with a blind cardholder who could not complete the new dispute form shaped how I have worked ever since. By 2011 a third of disputes were filed online. The role taught me to treat a complaint queue as a product backlog, and to count a feature as finished only when the people most likely to struggle with it had used it.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead rewards and card experience products.

Mandate

Work card disputes, then manage a disputes team and improve the accuracy of its decisions.

Outcomes

• Built a register of product-caused disputes that covered about 31% of non-fraud volume by 2006.
• Raised the team's decision accuracy in quality review from 88% to 96%.
• Proposed fixing dispute causes rather than adding staff, which led to the creation of a servicing product team.

Decisions in context

I moved from Duluth to Omaha to learn card payments at a scale a credit union could not show me. I started as a disputes analyst, working cases under the card network rules and the federal requirements on billing errors and unauthorised use, and became manager of a team of twenty-six specialists in 2005. I began keeping a register of disputes the product itself had caused: confusing merchant names, free trials converting without notice and refunds that were slow to post. By 2006 the register covered about 31% of our non-fraud volume. I took it to the head of card operations with a proposal to fix causes rather than add staff, and that conversation led to my move into product. Managing specialists also taught me how measures change behaviour. When we watched only cases closed per day, accuracy fell, so we added quality review and the numbers recovered.

Reason for the move

Moved into product to lead the design of online disputes and servicing.

Mandate

Serve members at the counter, then process consumer loan files and improve lending operations correspondence.

Outcomes

• Rewrote late-payment letters in plain language with the collections supervisor; calls asking what a notice meant fell by about a third.
• Reconciled payment schedules on about 1,200 auto loans after a system conversion.
• Presented a proposal on loan-file checklists to the operations committee, which adopted it in 2002.

Decisions in context

Skaarland was my apprenticeship in what members actually experience. I started at the counter in July 1999, two months after graduating, opening accounts, taking deposits and answering questions about fees I had not designed and could not always justify. In 2001 I moved into lending operations as an analyst, processing consumer and auto loan files, reconciling payment schedules and drafting the letters members received when a payment was late. I rewrote those letters in plain language with the collections supervisor, and calls from members asking what a notice meant fell by about a third. The credit union was small enough that its chief executive knew most staff by name, and he let a junior analyst present a proposal to the operations committee. I left in 2003 to work in card disputes, but I kept the habit of reading every letter a product sends before it goes.

Reason for the move

Moved to Quillmore Card Services to learn card payments and disputes at scale.