MSUFCU: INNOVATING FOR YOUR COMMUNITY

Benjamin Maxim, Chief Digital Strategy & Innovation Officer at MSUFCU, on helping drive innovation to better serve local communities

It’s not often you find someone who has worked at one company for over a decade, but Benjamin Maxim, Michigan State University Federal Credit Union’s (MSUFCU) Chief Digital Strategy & Innovation Officer, is one of them.

Now in his 16th year at MSUFCU, Maxim’s first role there was as a web developer. Joining at the height of the recession after the collapse of global housing markets in 2007, Maxim says he was “just happy to have a job” at the time.

Initially “planning to stick it out until finding something else” he wanted to do, little did Maxim know he had already landed at the organisation that would define the rest of his career.

“I immediately fell in love with the credit union mission of people helping people and felt it gave meaning to a career in technology that might be absent at other bigger tech firms. I had only ever had an account with a credit union, never a bank, so it was probably meant to be.”

A series of mini careers amid professional and business growth

From web developer to Chief Digital Strategy & Innovation Officer, Maxim has been able to keep his drive by being challenged with new experiences during his time at MSUFCU.

“I have a leader who I’ve reported to for most of my career, who has been so supportive and allowed me to follow a path of technology and innovation in a series of mini careers along the way. I haven’t just done the same thing for 16 years,” explains Maxim.

From web development to iOS development and then development management, Maxim has been involved with almost all MSUFCU has to offer. Helping build the credit union’s internal web operations, Maxim then found himself building MSUFCU’s new digital banking solution, a transaction solution “similar to Venmo or PayPal”, and mobile remote deposit capture software.

Working across the credit union’s broad technological infrastructure, Maxim was then asked to lead MSUFCU’s innovation programme, after building UX, QA, and development teams, the latter of which is now 25-person strong. Now three years into the role, Maxim has already helped develop an innovation lab and an MSUFCU investment arm – Reseda Group – where Maxim serves as Chief Technology Officer.

Growing alongside the credit union, Maxim is grateful he gets “to be involved in everything from start to finish”. And, although admitting his dream job would have seen him at a major tech company like Apple or Google, he “would’ve been a little fish in a massive pond”. At MSUFCU, Maxim gets to be a big fish, and as he grows, so does the pond.