- Client
- OAS Federal Credit Union, Washington, D.C.
- Members
- 8,500+ across 38 partner organizations
- Platform
- Umbraco CMS, Umbraco Engage, managed Azure
- Launched
- April 30, 2026, in English and Spanish
- 90%
- faster rate publishing, from roughly two days of manual edits to under 30 minutes
- 80%
- fewer disclosure-related content corrections once disclosures were bound to products
- 37%
- increase in online account-opening conversion with the guided account finder
- 33%
- growth in site sessions in the first quarter after launch
Client Description
Who OAS FCU serves
OAS Federal Credit Union (OAS FCU) is a Washington, D.C. credit union founded in 1962 by colleagues at the Organization of American States. It serves more than 8,500 members across 38 partner organizations, including National Geographic, and holds more than $290 million in assets.
Its members are professionals who live, work and relocate across borders. They bank in English and Spanish, and their financial needs change with each move, each career stage and each household decision.
Case Description
The strategy the platform was built to carry
OAS FCU engaged Scandia, an Umbraco agency in the USA, to build a digital platform that could carry its member strategy for years, and the new website was the first expression of that platform. The credit union's marketing leadership wanted a digital experience that helps members navigate financial decisions, recommends relevant products, supports personalization, creates conversion opportunities and produces better data.
The operational gains were real, and they are documented below. They were also a means to an end. A marketing team that spends two days publishing a rate change has no capacity to improve member journeys, so the platform had to remove that burden before the strategy could scale.
Scandia led the engagement as a consulting partner first and an implementation partner second. Strategy, discovery and member research came before design, and every architectural decision was tested against one question: whether it would make the next phase of the credit union's digital strategy easier to deliver.
What had to be Done
Five goals that governed the project
The credit union needed a platform that could grow with its strategy, and the previous WordPress site could not. English and Spanish content had drifted apart, rates and disclosures were maintained by hand across dozens of pages, and every layout change required a developer.
The brief from OAS FCU's marketing leadership was framed in business terms. Scandia translated it into five goals that governed the project:
Guide members to the right decision
Members arriving with a need should be led to the product that fits it, in the language they prefer.
Make the experience personal
Content should adapt to member segments, from a first-time borrower to a saver planning retirement.
Create conversion opportunities
Every product page should offer a clear next step toward an application or a conversation.
Generate better data
The credit union should be able to see what members look for, what they find and where they stop.
Keep evolving without rebuilding
Forms, appointments and more sophisticated member journeys should be additions to the platform and should never require a new one.
Accuracy and compliance sat underneath all five. Members cannot be guided well by a site that shows a mismatched rate or an outdated disclosure.
Strategy first
Is your website carrying your member strategy, or just your content?
Scandia helps credit unions and community banks define the digital strategy first, then build the platform that makes it scalable.
How did you do it?
Strategy first, then the platform
Scandia ran the engagement strategy first, and no design work began until the member strategy was documented and agreed. The first three phases were devoted to the decisions that every later phase depended on.
Alignment and discovery
Scandia worked with OAS FCU's marketing leadership to define goals, then completed a site analysis, a competitive analysis, an SEO audit and a full content inventory. The output was a shared picture of what the credit union wanted members to be able to do.
Personas and journeys
The team defined seven member personas, from Gen Z members building credit to long-term savers planning retirement, together with prospective members. Each persona recorded what that member needs to accomplish on the site, which later became the basis for the account guide and for personalization segments.
Wireframes and personalization planning
Wireframing covered more than page layout. Scandia and OAS FCU used it to identify where content should adapt by segment, where a member should be offered a next step, and which data each interaction should produce.
Design and the widget system
The new brand was designed as a system of widgets, each carrying its own approved design options. That decision served the strategy directly: a marketing team that can compose on-brand pages without a developer can test and improve member journeys at its own pace.
Build, training and launch
Scandia implemented the platform on Umbraco CMS with English and Spanish as parallel content trees, migrated all content from WordPress with a complete redirect map, and trained the full OAS FCU team before go-live. Scandia continues to host and support the platform on managed Azure infrastructure.
The efficiencies mattered. But they weren't the strategy. The bigger value was having a platform that could make the strategy scalable. Scandia didn't just give us a better platform. They built the infrastructure that gave us the ability to think much bigger about what the digital experience could become.
The Platform as a Foundation
Every capability answers a business goal
Every major component of the platform exists because a strategy goal required it. The mapping below was the working reference during architecture and remained the test for scope decisions throughout the build.
The guided account finder asks a prospective member a short set of questions and recommends the product that fits. The centralized rate manager holds every published rate as structured content, so one entry updates every page, table and product card that references it. The disclosure system binds the correct disclosure to each product and page. Branch and ATM data is integrated with shared-branching and surcharge-free networks, including CO-OP, covering more than 35,000 fee-free ATMs.
Rates, products and disclosures are structured data, so a recommendation engine or a personalized offer can draw on them without re-entry. Pages are composed from widgets, which means a new form or an appointment request becomes one more widget that editors can place wherever a journey calls for it. Umbraco Engage has been collecting behavioral data since launch, and future personalization will be informed by that evidence.
Delivered at launch
A bilingual widget platform, structured rate and disclosure data, the guided account finder, branch and ATM network integrations, and Umbraco Engage analytics with the first personalization segments.
Enabled next
Deeper personalization by persona, product recommendations and connected forms, each built on components already in production.
On the horizon
Appointment scheduling and multi-step member journeys, added to the platform rather than requiring a new one.
Results
What the credit union can now accomplish
The new oasfcu.org launched on April 30, 2026, and the credit union's marketing team now spends its time on member experience instead of site maintenance.
Capacity returned to the marketing team
Publishing a rate change takes under 30 minutes, down from roughly two days of manual edits, a reduction of more than 90 percent. Those hours are now available for campaigns and journey improvements.
Accuracy members can rely on
Disclosure-related content corrections fell by more than 80 percent once disclosures were bound to products, and mismatched rates across the site were eliminated.
Guidance that converts
The guided account finder contributed to a 37 percent increase in online account-opening conversion.
Independence for editors
The team composes, previews and publishes on-brand pages in English and Spanish without a developer.
A data foundation for the next phase
Umbraco Engage gives OAS FCU the analytics and segmentation it needs to extend personalization on the basis of observed member behavior.
The efficiency gains matter to the credit union, and their larger value is strategic. OAS FCU now has a platform that makes its member strategy scalable, with each future capability arriving as an addition to what is already in place.
Technical notes
- Umbraco CMS on Scandia-managed Azure infrastructure (App Service, Azure SQL, geo-redundant storage) with 24-hour monitoring
- Migrated from WordPress with complete English and Spanish redirect maps
- Umbraco Engage for personalization and analytics; Umbraco Forms for member-facing submissions
- Widget library of 69 grid blocks across five grid layouts, with design options set at the widget level
- Centralized rate management, product-level and page-level disclosure binding, alerts and holiday closures
- Shared-branching and surcharge-free ATM network integrations, including CO-OP
Related case studies
Build the platform before the strategy outgrows it
Scandia works with credit unions and community banks in the sequence used here. The member strategy is documented and agreed first, and the platform is built to carry it.