Engage fi Year End Review

From the Desk of the CEO

By Jenn Addabbo

CEO and Co-Founder

Engage fi

As each year comes to a close, I like to reflect back on everything that has happened that year – highlights, challenges, and the surprises that shaped the year. This year I am more grateful than ever for the support of our community – clients, partners, vendors and my amazing team of 56 people!

I am excited about the future of our industry and our company as I look at the opportunities ahead of us and wanted to take a moment to share our year in review.

This has been a year of investment for us in people, process, and technology. In January, we transitioned our company name from CU Engage and announced Engage fi as our new brand identity with a broadened scope of services to include all financial institutions, with a specific focus on community banks and credit unions. Through expanding our services, we gained even more knowledge and expertise through mutual collaboration that benefits both our current and future clients.

Although many things have changed over the last year, I am happy to report the transition has been well received by the financial institution community. As always, the promise to serve our clients is our top priority, and our growth throughout the year was strategically planned with an unwavering commitment to delivering results for you.

Our Team Has Expanded

The progress that Engage fi has experienced this year has allowed us to expand and attract the best talent across the country. As a result, we’ve added several new team members with tremendous industry experience who will help drive strategies, growth, and an enhanced experience with our clients. These new team members have supported countless initiatives to help financial institutions transform their business and will support our latest service offerings, including:

• Insurance as a Practice: Helping financial institutions with their insurance strategy, negotiate insurance contracts and productize their insurance for overall cost savings. Results were evident when a recent client earned $5M in income by taking the advice of our industry advisor, Kellie Lowder.
• Mergers & Acquisitions: Supporting clients with exploring and evaluating options to determine the strategic M&A opportunities in the market and ensuring the process is seamless. Our team of specialists ensure proper risk mitigation, manage the surviving vendor decision-making process, and the consolidation and conversion of critical systems.
• Conversion Services: Providing full lifecycle conversion project management for Core, Digital Banking, and Payment vendor/system changes. Our team of conversion specialists have completed over 1,500 complex and end-to-end implementations throughout their careers.
• All while still growing our core lines of business in RFP and Contract Negotiations for Visa/Mastercard, PIN Networks, Digital Banking, Core, Credit and Debit Card Processing – saving clients millions of dollars on each project! 

Continued Investment in Technology

As part of our continued investment in technology, Engage fi launched a new community financial institution portal, 360fi. The web-based portal merges proven industry data and insights with innovative technology automation to enable financial institutions to make more informed business decisions.

Key components include:

• Invoice Intel™—Invoices can be difficult to understand. Invoice Intel simplifies the process. Algorithms compare vendor invoice data against the bank or credit union’s contract data to map appropriate pricing line items to those items the financial institution has contracted. Visualizing vendor invoices with contract data allows errors to be quickly caught and adjusted as needed. The tool has uncovered hundreds of thousands of erroneous billing elements.
• Contract Locker™—Remembering contract end dates can be arduous. Contract Locker enables financial institutions to manage contracts in an organized and visual way. Users can view at a glance when contracts are due, so the financial institution doesn’t get locked into subsequent terms limiting their ability to negotiate better pricing and service level agreements.
• Vendor Insights™—Financial institutions gain visibility into vendors in their space without shopping around until they are ready. Vendor Insights narrows the potential vendor field by identifying the best core processors, digital providers, card processors, or networks based on the financial institution’s unique requirements. This access and insight also allows for collaboration with peer financial institutions so that our clients can share their experiences and insights with their critical vendors.

 By the Numbers

• 187 Total clients
• 35 New clients in 2022
• 8 Years in business
• Inc 5000 rank #1536 with 416% growth
• In 2022, saved more than $336M for our clients
• Worked on 324 projects in 2022
• More than 85 strategic projects completed in 2022
• Client Satisfaction – Client NPS score: 86
• Engaged at 40 industry events

These numbers mean something! It means more opportunity to share insights with more clients and more subject matter experts able to join our growing team providing best practices and guidance for our clients’ growth. Overall, it means that we are making a difference in the communities we serve – 30 states where our clients have headquarters and 23 where our team members live.

Shifting to Next Year

As we enter 2023 with market conditions continuing to change, we are focused on any potential changes that may impact our industry and our community financial institutions, and we are committed to helping you navigate them. Over the years, and with the experience of our team, we’ve found a balance of being able to help our clients invest in new transformative technologies, while at the same time helping to support them manage expenses – both strategies critical in an evolving market. Whether that’s negotiating cost savings with vendors or helping improve efficiencies, we can help you optimize your existing systems and the work you do with your vendors. We will make sure you are adequately prepared and positioned for growth throughout the next 12 months and beyond.

Accelerating Growth

As a company, we are constantly evolving and working to enhance our service offerings. We have the best team in the industry with combined expertise that cannot be matched and we are not taking our foot off the gas. We are committed to continued growth and peering around the corner to ensure that we are thinking ahead to what is next – Cybersecurity, Robotic Process Automation, CRM systems, fraud management, and investing in technology that puts our insights in the hands of our clients.

On behalf of Engage fi, thank you for continuing to put your trust in us and for your ongoing loyalty. We look forward to an exciting and prosperous new year!

Happy holidays!