Banking As A Service – A New Opportunity for Credit Unions to Partner with Fintech and Grow Deposits
Ben Maxim, COO
Reseda Group
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With the Synapse bankruptcy in 2024 and subsequent pull-back of sponsor banks in the banking industry, there is a void that needs to be filled for fintechs to continue to support the embedded finance that consumers love. Fintechs selling into credit unions have also found that when trying to sell a credit union on growing deposits through their embedded finance solution, if the deposits are actually held in a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) bank, the credit union leaders have shied away from choosing the fintech solution. Bolt by Reseda Group seeks to provide a much-needed answer to these problems to better support credit union and fintech partnerships. Reseda Group is MSUFCU’s wholly owned CUSO focused on both selling fintech products to credit unions, but we’ve invested in 28 other CUSOs, many of which are fintech solutions. More details on the Reseda Group ecosystem can be found at resedagroup.com.
Bolt by Reseda Group is our latest product looking to enhance credit union and fintech partnerships across the industry. Reseda Group is currently working on piloting its services with three of the Reseda Group portfolio companies and to power two new Reseda Group products that will be released later in 2025 or early 2026. Bolt by Reseda Group will offer many of the standard features of a BaaS solution, including tokenized authentication, wallets, KYC/KYB, money movement, accessing balances, and providing account aggregation services.
Where Bolt by Reseda Group is unique comes from the ability it gives a credit union partnering with a fintech to become a “bank (or credit union) of record” to support the banking services of their solution and be able to hold deposits or move money on behalf of the fintech users. This is a great channel for credit unions to be able to grow their deposits in a time when liquidity has been challenged and lending volume is about to start opening back up following the rate compression of the past couple of years.
One of the first fintechs to go live on the Bolt by Reseda Group platform will be CU LIFT Fund (https://culiftfund.com), a Reseda Group portfolio company and the catalyst for building out the Bolt by Reseda Group solution in the first place. CU Lift Fund is a fintech with a solution to increase the booking of direct auto loans by credit unions instead of their members being flipped to another lender in the dealer’s finance offer. CU LiftFund has built a network of dealers that will have their loans funded from a warehouse line of credit seeded by a group of credit unions. The credit union members will be issued a FastPass to be able to complete their vehicle buying transaction.
The typical credit union takes 21 or more days to actual send the funds to the dealer following a vehicle buying transaction, t. This is 21 days when the dealer is without a new car to sell, which tends to be a reason the dealer picks another lender in the finance office. Bolt by Reseda Group provides the necessary banking capabilities CU LIFT Fund needs to have move money between credit unions, the dealers, and the warehouse line of credit.
Credit Unions looking to explore BaaS banking as a deposit growth strategy can reach out to Reseda Group at resedagroup.com. to learn more.
