This year’s Innovation Series returns with bigger impact and broader horizons. Since 2018, this annual showcase has spotlighted forward-thinking solutions by giving innovators a stage to share ideas, demonstrate solutions, and spark meaningful change.
The Innovation Series is celebrating 2026 with a diverse slate of finalists whose breakthroughs are reshaping member experience, data and business intelligence, lending, employee engagement, fraud prevention, and digital member engagement — all with the power to help credit unions thrive in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
Read on to learn more about this year’s finalists in fraud prevention and reduction: illuma, Quavo, Quinte, TTEC Digital.
illuma
Describe your innovation.
Illuma’s latest fraud risk flagging feature closes a critical gap in credit union contact center fraud-management operations by extending IllumaSHIELD™ beyond authentication into real-time fraud risk awareness and response. The solution blends human insight with automated pattern detection, allowing agents and AI to collaboratively flag risky accounts, phone numbers, and voiceprints as threats emerge. When flagged activity is encountered, agents receive instant alerts, while supervisors and fraud teams can review, manage, and act on risk indicators through a centralized portal — eliminating manual reporting and disconnected monitoring processes.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Credit union contact centers remain a prime target for increasingly sophisticated fraud. While technologies like IllumaSHIELD™ have transformed member authentication, many institutions still rely on slow, manual, and fragmented processes — emails, chat messages, spreadsheets, or institutional memory — to report and share information about suspected fraud. These ad hoc workflows fail to scale, create blind spots across teams, and leave gaps that fraudsters can exploit.
How does it increase member value?
Fraud risk flagging empowers agents to confidently assist legitimate members while handling higher-risk interactions with appropriate caution. By removing manual reporting burdens and uncertainty, agents stay focused, composed, and efficient — leading to faster resolutions and more consistent member experiences.
For members, the value is twofold: convenience and protection. Legitimate callers experience friction-free phone banking when no risk is present, while suspicious behavior is identified earlier and addressed proactively. The result is greater trust in a holistic voice security approach that safeguards members without compromising accessibility or service quality.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
Unlike many fraud tools that introduce operational complexity, fraud risk flagging is designed to be easy to use, simple to manage, and immediately valuable without requiring dedicated staffing or specialized expertise. The intuitive user interface allows agents and managers to act on risk confidently without adding new workflows, monitoring teams, or manual alert triage.
The solution fits natively into IllumaSHIELD, extending value from an existing deployment rather than layering on another standalone system. It recognizes that agents are a critical part of a credit union’s fraud defense and makes that role easier — allowing them to focus on serving members instead of managing alerts or reports.
Importantly, fraud risk flagging is purpose-built for credit unions of all sizes. It delivers the same protection for low call-volume and smaller operations while scaling seamlessly as demand grows—without customization, lengthy deployments, or additional resources often required by solutions designed primarily for large enterprises.
Quavo
Describe your innovation.
Quavo has introduced Aria, who is our super-agent working within Quavo Fraud and Disputes (QFD), our fraud and dispute management platform. Aria, armed with advanced AI, business logic, and best-in-class integration capability, is constantly at work in the system automating work that is traditionally done manually by users. In addition, Aria also analyzes Quavo’s extensive data repository on past dispute actions and examines user work, recommending actions to take as they are performing their tasks. Aria is a coach, a protector, an automator of work, and a manager of resources, routing the most important work to users.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Fraud and disputes are a very complex use case at a credit union. When something goes wrong with a payment or a member doesn’t recognize a transaction, it can be difficult to make it right. The challenge is even greater doing this at scale. Aria ensures members receive quick and fair resolutions, creating significantly better outcomes for both the credit union and members alike.
How does it increase member value?
When a member has an issue with a purchase they made or is the victim of fraud, it is a moment that matters in their relationship with their credit union. Aria not only automates large amounts of work, she allows the credit union staff the ability to focus on making the right decisions, making sure that compliance is a given, and focusing on what truly matters: the member experience.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
Quavo has been in this industry for over a decade. We are not just software providers. We are partners, and we are experts at getting to know your business, how you want to treat your members, and how to bring industry best practices into your business. When it comes to AI and innovation, we have created datasets that simply do not exist anywhere else in the industry, which power extremely accurate and tested recommendations and automated actions.
Quinte
Describe your innovation.
Quinte’s flagship solution, CaseHUB, is an AI-driven case management orchestration platform engineered to automate disputes, fraud, and complaints in a centralized cloud-based system. By replacing fragmented and disconnected processes with intelligent orchestration, CaseHUB delivers a configurable, end-to-end solution for enterprise case management on a single, coordinated platform.
The platform is comprised of three modules designed to streamline modern case management:
- CaseHUB For Disputes reduces handling time by up to 40% through end-to-end automation across all payment types, including card, digital, ATM, ACH, EFT, and check. Built-in regulatory timelines ensure compliance, while communications and ledger activity are automated within the platform. Agentic AI further streamlines dispute resolution by auto-triaging and resolving low-risk disputes. Combined, these capabilities are strategically deployed, empowering staff to enhance engagement points with members while safeguarding the credit union.
- CaseHUB For Fraud unifies payment and non-payment fraud into a single investigative workspace. Investigations can be more proactively managed through auto case creation and sound throughputs. Additionally, SAR filing capabilities and link analysis enable teams to identify patterns and trends across related cases. For check fraud, CaseHUB leverages image forensics AI to deliver accurate detection of signature mismatches, amount tampering, and altered items.
- CaseHUB For Complaints strengthens member experience and institutional reputation by offering flexible, configurable intake options that meet members where they are. Credit unions can customize dynamic forms tailored to business lines, risk categories, or workflow needs, ensuring complaints are captured accurately and without friction. Members can submit complaints through mobile, web, email, phone, or at a branch.
CaseHUB brings these innovations together to deliver the best-in-class standard expected from leading financial service providers, backed by Quinte’s business process management and data analytics support.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Credit unions often struggle with fragmented tools and legacy silos when managing operational cases, particularly in areas like fraud, disputes, and compliance. As volumes and complexity rise, these disjointed systems hinder teams’ ability to maintain consistency, visibility, and control. CaseHUB offers credit unions a powerful opportunity to prioritize meaningful member engagements while adopting a more productive, efficient, and enterprise-wide approach to compliance and operations.
To overcome these challenges, credit unions need a standardized, unified system of work that provides end-to-end visibility, enabling teams to identify, prioritize, and automate high-impact tasks with built-in governance. Quinte Financial Technologies delivers this through CaseHUB, its cloud-based, AI-powered enterprise case management platform. It orchestrates the automation of every case, task, workflow, and audit within a single, intuitive system by streamlining operations, ensuring regulatory compliance, and enhancing overall efficiency.
By centralizing operations, CaseHUB reduces redundant steps, enforces consistent workflows, and ensures every case aligns with institutional policies and regulatory requirements. Teams gain complete audit trails and cross-departmental visibility.
How does it increase member value?
Quinte knows member trust is paramount for credit unions and that trust weakens when investigations stall or when members receive inconsistent updates due to fragmented, outdated tools. CaseHUB provides avenues for more focused and insightful engagement with members.
CaseHUB addresses this challenge by orchestrating the automation of investigations across all case types within a single, cloud-based system. This exclusive capability, a single investigative workspace, elevates member sentiment by replacing complexity with clarity and consistency across every interaction.
For one of the largest credit unions, CaseHUB closed long-standing gaps between different fraud types. The credit union has adopted CaseHUB specifically to unify fraud investigations, giving teams consistent visibility across related cases that were previously managed in parallel systems.
Another California-based credit union describes CaseHUB as a “gamechanger” for fraud management. By consolidating all fraud case activity into a single system, teams are able to identify emerging patterns quickly, respond more effectively, and improve investigative accuracy through stronger visibility and coordination.
Across both credit unions, the impact is tangible. Members feel protected, issues are resolved faster, and service quality remains strong as volumes grow. By transforming fragmented investigations into coordinated, transparent experiences, CaseHUB enables scalability and reinforces trust at every touchpoint.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
CaseHUB differentiates itself as an enterprise case management platform by bringing cloud-based orchestration and automation to compliance. While most systems focus on a single case management function, CaseHUB manages the full lifecycle for multiple case types from the moment they enter the credit union through final resolution. Additionally, our ServiceDESK is an embedded CaseHUB feature that accelerates resolutions, reduces costs, and scales compliance.
In the current market, most solutions are designed to address only one part of the problem. Some solutions focus on disputes, others on fraud alerts, check analysis, or complaint intake. These systems operate independently and stop short of managing the full investigation and resolution process, leaving credit unions to bridge the gaps with manual handoffs, spreadsheets, and disconnected workflows.
CaseHUB serves as the strategic bridge solution, eliminating swivel-chair moments and replacing multiple tools with a single 360° investigation backbone for the enterprise. Disputes, payment and non-payment fraud, check fraud, and complaints are orchestrated within one system of record, ensuring investigations move seamlessly across teams rather than breaking at system boundaries.
This enterprise foundation also delivers cross-team visibility for leadership. Rather than assembling updates from different platforms, leaders can see case progress, risk exposure, and outcomes across all investigation types in one place, enabling better oversight and prioritization. Customized reports can be generated using built-in business intelligence and delivered to your inbox on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
CaseHUB further optimizes execution through AI-driven case summaries and SAR narratives, reducing manual effort while maintaining consistent, audit-ready documentation. Automating cases across the lifecycle results in faster resolution, clear ownership, and traceability that supports operational efficiency at scale.
TTEC Digital
Describe your innovation.
TTEC Digital’s SmartApps Cloud is an intelligent, cloud-based fraud orchestration platform purpose-built for the credit union contact center.
What opportunity or challenge does it address?
Rather than relying on a single authentication method, SmartApps Cloud unifies device-, voice-, and identity-verification into a single, seamless workflow that authenticates members in real time, often before an agent even answers the call. What makes SmartApps Cloud innovative is not just the individual technologies, but how they are orchestrated together. By integrating TransUnion Authenticator Plus, VoxEQ voice biometrics, and IDgo device-based authentication, SmartApps Cloud transforms complex, multi-layered fraud defenses into an invisible, automated experience for members. The platform dynamically applies the right level of authentication based on risk, allowing legitimate members to move quickly while stopping sophisticated threats such as AI-driven scams, deepfake voices, and repeat fraudsters. This orchestration-first approach modernizes contact center security, replacing static, knowledge-based authentication with a future-ready, adaptive fraud framework that continuously evolves alongside emerging threats.
How does it increase member value?
SmartApps Cloud enables credit unions to deliver a rare combination members expect but rarely experience: strong security without friction. By authenticating members through passive and password-less methods, SmartApps Cloud dramatically reduces the need for repetitive security questions, long verification times, and call transfers, resulting in faster resolutions and a more respectful member experience.
From a member perspective, the value is immediate and tangible:
- Faster access to help – Many members are verified before the call connects, reducing handle time and frustration.
- Greater peace of mind – Advanced fraud protection reassures members that their financial identity is protected, even against emerging AI-driven threats.
- Consistent, seamless experiences – Authentication feels effortless and transparent, reinforcing trust rather than creating friction.
For credit unions, this translates into stronger member trust, higher satisfaction, and reduced fraud losses — without sacrificing the personalized service model that differentiates them from large banks. SmartApps Cloud allows credit unions to protect what matters most while strengthening the member relationship at every interaction.
What differentiates this innovation from competitors?
SmartApp’s Cloud combines numerous best-in-market solutions, creating a multilayered fraud prevention solution.