Eko puts self-directed investing inside a credit union’s existing digital banking. Members open an investment account and make their first trade in the same app they already use for checking and savings, with the credit union’s name on it.
Getting a member from curious to invested, though, is a conversation before it is a transaction. That conversation now belongs to Kiro Money.
The Challenge
Most members who could invest never start. The questions that come before the first deposit — what an index fund is, how much to begin with, whether now is a bad time — are exactly the ones a credit union’s staff rarely has time for, and the ones members end up answering somewhere else. By the time they are ready, the account is open at an app the credit union does not own.
The Solution
The partnership puts Kiro’s assistant alongside Eko’s investing experience inside digital banking. A member asks those first questions in the same place they would open the account, gets answers grounded in their own balances, and — where the institution has approved it — can be pointed to Eko’s account opening when they are ready. The assistant carries the credit union’s branding and the products it wants recommended; Eko carries the investing.
Because it runs inside the digital banking the member already uses, there is no new login and no new app for the member, and no core change for the institution.
What This Means
Investing is the product credit unions most often lose to outside apps, and the one where a member’s first questions decide where the money goes. With Kiro answering them at the moment they are asked, the account opens at the institution the member already trusts. It is what Kiro was built for: financial intelligence embedded where people already are, turning a question into the next right step.