Forbes contributor Gary Drenik on post-merger integration as the foundation for what comes next, featuring Savana’s Emily Steele
Credit union acquisitions of banks hit a record pace in 2024. 2025 followed close behind, with 16 deals announced through November, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Analysts expect the pace to accelerate through 2026. Writing in Forbes, Gary Drenik asks the question the announcements skip. What happens once the ink dries?
Credit Unions Buying Banks Inherit Two of Everything
Post-merger integration is where a deal’s promise and its delivery come apart. An acquiring credit union takes on a second set of systems and operational habits. Data ends up scattered across departments. Member-facing tools behave differently depending on which institution a member came from.
Savana President and COO Emily Steele told Drenik that technology integration is the most underestimated part of M&A planning. Fragmented cores, siloed data, and disconnected channels degrade the member experience. That happens at the precise moment continuity matters most.
The consequences show up in the numbers. JD Power’s 2026 U.S. Credit Union Satisfaction Study found member satisfaction eroding four points year over year. More than half of members now hold checking or savings accounts elsewhere. Steele’s read is that dissatisfied members rarely leave outright. They shift balances instead. That shift accelerates after a poorly executed acquisition, as operational problems compound into reputational damage.
AI Raises the Cost of Fragmentation
Cornerstone Advisors’ What’s Going On in Banking 2026 research puts generative AI in production at 49% of banks and 59% of credit unions. Agentic AI is now a board-level conversation at more than half of institutions. The institutions deploying these tools keep finding the same fragmented infrastructure that integration left behind.
“Agentic AI does not function well on fragmented infrastructure.”
Steele’s argument is that agentic systems need unified data and consistent operational context across every channel. In an acquisition, the answer is not to rip out and consolidate systems immediately. It is to build a unification layer that lets parallel systems operate as one.
The demand is already there. Prosper Insights & Analytics found nearly 22% of credit union members would use agentic AI to pay bills, against 18% of U.S. adults. Another 19% would use it to invest, compared with roughly 15% of the general population.
Drenik closes on due diligence. The question is not only what systems a target runs. It is whether those systems can support a coherent vision for member experience. Credit unions built their standing on trust. That trust is kept or lost in the months after a merger.
Read the full article at Forbes
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