Portland, Maine (August 10-11, 2026) – The 2026 Synergent Connect Conference welcomed over 150 credit union professionals representing 48 credit unions from across the country to Portland, Maine, for two days of learning, conversation, and connection. Attendees gathered at the Westin Portland Harborview to hear from nationally recognized speakers and industry experts, exchange ideas, explore Synergent solutions and strategies, and consider what’s ahead for their credit unions and the financial services industry.
From creating exceptional experiences and leading teams through change to navigating disruption, putting data to work, managing risk, and preparing for the continued evolution of artificial intelligence, this year’s sessions explored many of the opportunities and challenges shaping the future of credit unions.
“Connect is one of my favorite times each year to bring our credit union partners together in one place,” said Tyler Hudson, President of Synergent. “There is tremendous value in learning from our speakers, but just as important are the conversations and connections that happen throughout these two days. Our credit unions learn from one another, share what they are experiencing, and leave with new ideas they can take back to their organizations. It’s also an opportunity for our team to spend meaningful time with our partners, strengthen the relationships we’ve built, and have conversations that help us better understand their needs and provide the guidance and support they’ve come to expect from Synergent. We’re proud to create a space where all of those conversations and connections can happen.”
Beyond the educational sessions, Connect once again created plenty of opportunities for attendees to spend time together. Jonathan Taylor and Shirley Senn from BankSocial were onsite throughout the conference, having conversations with attendees to be featured on future episodes of the CU Spotlight Podcast. Credit union professionals connected with Synergent employees, speakers, vendors, and each other during meals, breaks in the Exhibitor Hall, and at an evening social at Luna Rooftop Bar. The 2026 Synergent Connect Conference concluded with a traditional Maine lobster bake, sponsored by Systems Engineering.
2026 Conference Highlights
Celebrating 55 Years Together
The conference officially kicked off with a video that highlighted that 2026 marks Synergent’s 55th year of serving credit unions.
“55 years is an extraordinary milestone,” reflected Hudson. “It represents generations of Synergent employees, credit union leaders, board members, partners, and advocates who contribute to this organization and believe in the value of what we can accomplish together. It also represents 55 years of credit unions placing their trust in us. We do not take that trust for granted.”
Keynote Sessions & Speakers
This year’s keynote sessions challenged attendees to think about how their organizations create meaningful experiences, respond to change, remain relevant in a disrupted financial landscape, and prepare for a future increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
6 Critical Steps to Create the Ultimate Customer Experience
6 Critical Steps to Create the Ultimate Customer ExperienceScott Deming | Customer Service and Customer Experience Expert
Chris Ruden provided a powerful message: change is inevitable. But the ability to adapt is a source of strength.
“Who are we? What do we do? What are we selling?”
Scott Deming opened the keynote sessions with an energetic and interactive look at how credit unions can differentiate themselves by creating experiences (not just services) that build lasting member loyalty
A dynamic executive leader and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, Deming has more than three decades of experience spanning brand development, strategic planning, employee engagement, and culture transformation across a wide range of industries. Drawing from that experience, he challenged attendees to look beyond products, features, and benefits and instead ask two fundamental questions: “Who are we?” and “Why us?” The answers, he explained, should be rooted in a shared sense of purpose that is understood and embraced throughout the organization.
Through examples from some of the world’s most recognizable brands, Deming illustrated how exceptional experiences can turn customers into brand advocates and create loyalty that goes far beyond price or product. He encouraged credit unions to look at every interaction from the member’s perspective, use technology to enhance rather than replace relationships, create a consistent service culture, communicate without assumptions, and understand what members expect so those expectations can be exceeded.
Ultimately, Deming emphasized the importance of empathy in creating meaningful relationships. By putting themselves in the shoes of members and employees and asking what that person would value in the moment, credit unions can move interactions beyond transactions and create experiences people remember.
“You put yourself in other people’s shoes and you ask yourself this simple question: If I’m that person looking at me, ‘what would I love for me?’” asked Deming. “I promise you, it will immediately and forever change the way you live, the way you act, the way you are.”
Change Is Strength: Build Future-Ready Teams Through Transformational Change
Change Is Strength: Build Future-Ready Teams Through Transformational ChangeChris Ruden | International Speaker, Resilience, Change, and Culture
Chris Ruden provided a powerful message: change is inevitable. But the ability to adapt is a source of strength.
Speaking candidly from raw, personal experience, Ruden was born with a disability that he hid from the world as he grew up. He talked about his experiences with bullying, the feelings he had, and how changing his perspective changed everything.
“My entire life, I had to challenge the norm and change it constantly,” explained Ruden, “And maybe you know what it’s like to feel like you’re building the plane while you’re flying it. Or trying to change the tire while it is moving. The industry is constantly evolving, where change is no longer an event: it’s the environment. Change is not what’s happening. It’s the new normal, it’s the next normal. Change is normal. How do we navigate that?”
As an internationally recognized speaker on resilience, change, and culture, Ruden uses humor, storytelling, and practical strategies to help organizations turn obstacles into opportunities. His Connect presentation focused on building future-ready teams that can navigate disruption with resilience, adaptability, and trust.
Ruden told a story about being at Disney to speak. An 11-year-old girl came up to him, grabbed his hand, and swung it as a kid might. Ruden froze, but she looked at him and said, “It’s okay! You don’t have to hide around me.”
“1,000 people were there to see me speak, and she was the only one who saw me,” mused Ruden. “That was that moment for me, that was that challenge of…of where the curiosity comes in. If I’m good enough for her, why am I not good enough for me? If she believes that I can change, why don’t I? All it took was that spark.”
Ruden described his decision to stop hiding his hand and posted a video online. He was surprised when it went viral with seven million views and resulted in a call from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to compete on The Titan Games.
“Everything I believed, every certainty I had was incorrect,” reflected Ruden. “What happens if your certainties aren’t as correct as you think they are? What happens if they will work out?”
Ruden expertly challenged attendees to consider how they and their teams respond to uncertainty and how organizations can move beyond outdated processes and limiting beliefs. Among the areas he explored were reframing resistance to change as an opportunity for growth, creating psychological safety and trust, and developing the mindset necessary to move through disruption with clarity and confidence.
“We serve members,” concluded Ruden. “Yes, we have partners, but we are people helping people. The people at our tables, the people on your teams, the people in your lives, and the people you serve. When you are curious enough to ask how might we do this better? How might we do different? How ‘might we’ instead of ‘we can’t…’ your entire life changes.”
Built for This Moment: How Credit Unions Win in a Disrupted Financial Future
Built for This Moment: How Credit Unions Win in a Disrupted Financial FutureNicole Harper | Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning, Jack Henry
Amid rapid changes throughout financial services, Nicole Harper brought the conversation directly back to what has long differentiated credit unions: their relevance to the people and communities they serve.
“The throughline here is going to be ‘built for this moment,’” stated Harper. “We know that there is a pace of technology shifts and innovation happening… You have a sweet spot: built for purpose, built for mission. While there is constant change happening around us, one thing that will never change is that philosophy that credit unions have.”
Harper shared a strategic perspective informed by her experience across banking, fintech, digital and retail delivery, marketing, partnerships, and enterprise strategy.
Harper used current industry data and trends to illustrate how credit unions can pivot and thrive in a space where change is constant. She explored how credit unions can leverage their human advantage while responding to volatility and disruption across the financial services landscape. The credit union movement’s “people helping people” philosophy remains a differentiator, but delivering on that mission requires credit unions to continually consider and refine what relevance looks like in a modern financial experience. She stressed how important the relationship is between strategy and execution, and explored opportunities for credit unions to drive efficiency and growth while balancing immediate pressures with longer-term ambitions. Key themes included:
- Winning relevance by staying connected, trusted and essential.
- Leveraging data for better insights, stronger decisions, and greater impact.
- Driving efficiency through purposeful automation, simplifying processes, empowering teams, and using AI strategically.
- Fostering an innovative growth mindset.
- Unlocking growth opportunities to expand member reach, build strategic partnerships, and invest in the future.
- Identifying opportunities to best serve small businesses.
- Delivering financial services with evolving generational needs in mind.
Winning relevance by staying connected, trusted and essential.“So, execution is your competitive advantage, right?” asked Harper. “It’s how you’re going to execute differently in your market, your right to win: and you’ve got this. I mean, what doesn’t change? Your cooperative principles as a credit union movement. And you’re built for this movement. Amid all of this disruption and the pace of change and the ambiguity, you’re built for it. Your mission is timeless and I think your time is now.”
AI & The Octopus Organization™
AI & The Octopus Organization™Jonathan Brill | Strategic Advisor, Inventor, Best Selling Author, & Renowned Keynote Speaker
“When you think about the future, you don’t know what will happen next. We have to be there for each other.”
Jonathan Brill closed out the 2026 Synergent Connect Conference by looking ahead to a future in which organizations do more than simply experiment with artificial intelligence.
A strategic advisor, futurist, inventor, best-selling author, and renowned keynote speaker, Brill has worked with organizations around the world to understand the collision of AI with economic, geopolitical, technological, and societal change. At Connect, he challenged attendees to think beyond individual AI tools and consider how artificial intelligence could reshape the way organizations themselves operate. He forecast global trends expected to remain top-of-mind through 2030 and encouraged attendees to consider finding the balance when approaching governance in the age of AI:
- Reliability vs. Agility
- Control vs. Innovation
- Retain vs. Outsource
Brill introduced the concept of the “Octopus Organization”—an organizational structure inspired by the way an octopus combines a central brain with arms that can independently sense, react, and make decisions. Applied to business, the model illustrates an organization in which strategy and oversight remain coordinated while intelligence and decision-making become more distributed.
Brill also explored how different forms of AI are advancing and beginning to converge. While symbolic AI is most of what has been done to this point, neural AI—which encompasses supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning—will be brought together with reasoning over the coming years as a left and right brain AI.
His message emphasized that the organizations positioned to lead in an AI-driven future will not simply automate existing tasks. Instead, they will rethink how information flows, how decisions are made, and how teams respond to changing customer and market needs. AI will allow us to innovate dramatically faster than ever before.
“What’s going to happen with artificial intelligence is, as we have the ability to be more innovative, we will all have to innovate more,” stated Brill.
We are in a time where we will be able to figure out what is now possible with new tools that weren’t possible in the past.
“Where are you going to retain capabilities inside and what are you going to outsource?” asked Brill. “We’re in a whole new world of possibility, a whole new world of change, a whole new world of growth.”
Breakout Sessions
Synergent Connect attendees also had the opportunity to select from three breakout sessions presented by Alkami, Compass IT Compliance, and BankSocial. Each session was offered twice, giving attendees the opportunity to choose two topics most relevant to their credit unions.
Turning Data Into Growth – Driving Member Engagement
Sarah Mealey | Solution Engineer, Alkami
Credit unions have access to an enormous amount of member data, but having data and putting it to meaningful use are two different things.
Sarah Mealey, Solution Engineer at Alkami, explored how credit unions can take a more strategic approach to data-driven marketing and move beyond one-size-fits-all outreach. The session focused on using insights to better understand member needs, create more timely and relevant experiences, uncover growth opportunities, and strengthen performance throughout the member lifecycle.
Are You Doing Your Due Diligence on Your Partners? Best Practices for Both New and Existing Vendor Reviews
Derek Boczenowski | Chief Architect, Compass IT Compliance
As credit unions rely on an ever-expanding network of technology providers, fintechs, core processors, cloud services, and other third parties, effective vendor management continues to be an important component of managing operational, regulatory, and cybersecurity risk.
Derek Boczenowski, Chief Architect at Compass IT Compliance, examined common areas where financial institutions can fall short when onboarding new vendors and conducting ongoing due diligence. His session provided practical considerations for building a vendor management program that protects members, addresses regulatory expectations, and can scale as an institution’s vendor relationships evolve.
How CUSOs and DeFi Define the Future of Credit Unions
Becky Reed | Chief Operating Officer, BankSocial
Becky Reed, Chief Operating Officer at BankSocial, brought attendees into a conversation about the intersection of the cooperative financial model and decentralized finance, or DeFi.
Her session explored how the transparency and real-time infrastructure associated with DeFi can intersect with the trust, governance, and community focus at the heart of credit unions and CUSOs. Reed discussed what this combination could mean for a more member-centered financial model and considerations for credit unions as digital wallets and decentralized technologies continue to evolve.
Connecting and Collaborating
Education was only one part of the Synergent Connect experience.
The conference included a Symitar User Group Meeting exclusively for Symitar credit unions. The solutions-focused session provided an opportunity for users to connect with one another, share ideas, explore practical ways to get more from the core, and learn from real-world demonstrations and peer experiences.
Additionally, Synergent’s Management Team participated in an interactive Q&A panel discussion. The session gave attendees an opportunity to hear updates about Synergent and its solutions and, importantly, ask questions directly from the floor.
Attendees also had opportunities to visit the Exhibitor Hall and connect with event sponsors and industry partners.
Until Next Year
As the 2026 Synergent Connect Conference came to a close, attendees left Portland with fresh perspectives on how their credit unions can navigate change while remaining focused on the people and communities they serve.
Across two days, a common thread emerged: the financial services landscape may be changing quickly, but credit unions continue to have meaningful opportunities to lead by staying focused on people, embracing thoughtful change, learning from one another, and finding new ways to deliver on their mission.
Thank you to our credit union partners, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, and everyone who joined us in Portland and helped make the 2026 Synergent Connect Conference possible.
Save the Date! 2027 Synergent Connect Conference
August 9-10, 2027
We can’t wait to see you! Mark your calendar for the next Synergent Connect Conference. The agenda, speaker information, lodging details, and more will be shared as the information becomes available.
