InTouch Credit Union boosts authentication with IDgo

Eltropy will host a webinar with IDgo and InTouch Credit Union on member authentication across live-agent and AI voice channels. The session will examine changes InTouch Credit Union made.

InTouch Credit Union moved from knowledge-based questions to device-based authentication through Eltropy's integration with IDgo, the companies said. They said the change increased the share of member interactions authenticated with IDgo from 2% to 24% and cut authentication time on live-agent calls by 60 to 90 seconds.

InTouch serves more than 70,000 members across all 50 states and 20 countries, and holds more than USD $800 million in assets, according to the companies. Monthly IDgo authentication volume at the credit union rose by 1,034% after the system was introduced.

Authentication through the Eltropy AI Voice Agent nearly doubled, they said. The shorter process also freed about 250 hours of employee capacity each month across 10,000 calls.

Authentication shift

Credit union contact centres have commonly relied on knowledge-based questions and one-time passcodes to verify callers. Those checks can slow service and become harder to manage when institutions add AI agents to customer interactions, the companies said.

The discussion will focus on how a trusted device relationship can carry across channels, allowing a member to move between a live call and an AI voice conversation without repeating the same verification steps. Speakers for the session are Kristen Schmieg-Jester, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at InTouch Credit Union; Rocky Scales, Chief Executive Officer at IDgo; and Abhishek Tiwari, Chief Product Officer at Eltropy.

Schmieg-Jester described the changes in operational terms.

"Authentication should establish trust, not become a barrier to service," said Kristen Schmieg-Jester, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at InTouch Credit Union.

"Our partnership with IDgo and Eltropy has allowed us to modernize the way we verify identity while reducing friction for members and employees alike. By creating a persistent trust framework across both employee-assisted and AI-powered interactions, we can deliver faster, more personalized service while maintaining the security and confidence our members expect," Schmieg-Jester said.

Tiwari linked the issue to broader credit union adoption of AI agents.

"Credit unions want AI agents working for their members, and the first thing any of those agents needs to know is who it's talking to," said Abhishek Tiwari, Chief Product Officer at Eltropy. "InTouch settled that question at the device level and let the answer follow the member from a live call to an AI voice conversation and back. That gives a credit union the identity certainty and control it needs before it trusts an AI agent with anything that matters. Kristen and her team have real numbers to show for it, and other credit unions will get a lot out of hearing how they got there."

Operational impact

The figures point to a practical benefit in contact centre workflows. Saving up to a minute and a half on each live-agent interaction can substantially reduce staff time where verification is required on every call.

At 10,000 calls a month, the estimated 250 hours released from authentication tasks would give staff more time to address the underlying reason for the member's call. The companies presented that as one of the clearest outcomes of moving away from repeated security questions.

Scales said a verified device can reduce the need to restart trust checks at each stage of an interaction.

"A member's phone can carry trust from one conversation to the next, so the credit union doesn't have to rebuild it from scratch every time," said Rocky Scales, Chief Executive Officer at IDgo. "Once InTouch established that trusted device relationship, every interaction that followed, whether with a person or an AI agent, started on firmer ground. That is what lets agentic AI move quickly without cutting corners on security."