Copilot helps one of Canada’s largest credit unions go beyond the numbers to create more personalized service

When Adi Bhatia, a branch manager at Island Savings, a division of First West Credit Union, recently had to step in to support one of his colleagues, he realized he needed to know all the financial details and procedures for the upcoming appointments on his calendar.
 
Previously, this meant sifting through documents and cross‑checking details mid‑conversation, pulling focus away from members of the credit union. But now, thanks to Microsoft Copilot, preparing for the meetings, even on short notice, was a snap.

“In the past when I would cover a colleague’s appointments with members, I’d have to spend time gathering all the background information from our systems,” Bhatia says. “Now, we can use Copilot and search to see what they are coming in for. You can quickly find those procedures before, rather than when they are here in your office. It’s streamlined the process, so we are definitely spending more time with the members rather than looking in the system and searching for everything when they are sitting here.”
 
First West, British Columbia’s third-largest credit union with more than 280,000 members, recently became the first enterprise Canadian financial institution to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to every team member across its organization. More than 1,300 team members now have Copilot embedded in the Microsoft suite of tools, giving First West a powerful AI boost to assist its members.
 
This bold digital transformation is designed to ensure that the human touch is amplified at its branches, simplifying processes and procedures to create deeper connections with First West members — whether they are in branch, on the phone or online.
 
“Our purpose is about empowering our members, our communities and our teams to flourish — creating health and optimism in Canadians’ financial lives,” says Launi Skinner, CEO at First West. “Technology plays a huge part in enabling us to provide personalized advice and build authentic, human-to-human relationships based on trust. Having faster access to better data and stored member information elevates our team’s ability to provide tailored financial advice that’s truly impactful.”
 
By integrating AI into many of the tools the teams use, Skinner points out the cultural shift that’s enabling First West teams to be more innovative and member-focused: “Copilot moves the administrative load out of the way so our advisors can be fully present with members. That means faster answers, clearer plans and a stronger human connection across every channel.”

Making the leap

The path to Copilot was a quick one for First West. About a year ago, members of the leadership team attended a demonstration on how the AI assistant could augment and support work functions, sparking immediate interest. From there a few people began testing the tool within the First West ecosystem. By the end of 2024, 200 to 300 licenses were handed out to early adopters within the organization to see how Copilot would work in a variety of roles.
 
Those early adopters helped First West as they tested ways to make Copilot fit the needs of the organization. One proof of concept revolved around unstructured data – text-heavy information that isn’t organized in an easy manner.
 
“Our teams use a wealth of information,” says Darrell Jaggers, chief transformation officer at First West. “We didn’t add more places for them to look. We made the information we already trust findable and actionable. In seconds, Copilot turns a search into an answer, orchestrating our content — policies, procedures, resources — into clear, immediate steps, so advisors can move with confidence and stay focused on the members in front of them.”
 
One of the elements that First West launched during the rollout of Copilot was a retail lending agent, where it was able to take the voluminous available resources – documents, procedures, updates – and put them into an AI agent for employees that quickly provided solutions.
 
“Within seconds, advisors know exactly what to do next,” Skinner says. “The reaction was pure excitement — people were saying, ‘Wow!’ This wasn’t just a step forward; it felt like reaching the summit. It’s the solution they’ve been hoping for all along.”
 
The successes First West had with its early adopter group made it easier for the leadership team to roll out Copilot on a wider scale over the past six months, as many employees were excited to try the tools that had the organization buzzing.

Demand for Copilot was organic, says Paul Brodeur, chief operating officer at First West. “Everyone knew someone that was using it. And so, it became kind of like a ‘What’s going on over there and how do I get into that?’ And I think it really created an excitement and desire to have Copilot. In change management, it’s a far easier process to have people asking for change than having change done to you.”
 
By starting with that user group and then having them work, learn and share together, “we could start demonstrating some quick wins the rest of the organization could have access to, and I think it was a really exciting way to roll it out to the full organization,” says Brodeur.

Crunching the numbers

For First West, mortgage renewal is an important part of their business. According to Brodeur, between Sept. 1 and the end of this year, First West will have more mortgages up for renewal than it had all last year. The process can be complex and time-consuming for its employees. In the past, they would have to go into a Microsoft SharePoint site and search through dozens of documents to help with the process.
 
Now, First West has built an agent on top of SharePoint that allows advisors to query the documents quickly and get the step-by-step details for renewal.
 
“We’re conservatively saving (time) per renewal,” Brodeur says. “Because usually what happens is that if an advisor isn’t 100% certain about a process, they go to their closest colleague’s desk and ask them. And so, now it’s not just their own time they’re using up to look for information, they’re actually using up a colleague’s time as well. So, to free that up has been powerful.”
 
In branch operations, Bhatia highlights that team members leverage Copilot’s search capabilities to retrieve a broad set of related insights, enabling more holistic preparation for member interactions.
 
“When we query Copilot, it brings back the full picture — policies, checklists, related cases — so advisors prep holistically for member meetings,” he says. “That 360‑degree view boosts confidence: they can spot the next best question to ask and explain options clearly.”

Skinner, who has toured several branches to get first-hand experience of how employees are using Copilot, agrees that there is an increased excitement level throughout the organization.
 
“Teams are energized by how quickly they can get to high‑quality answers,” she says. “Copilot speeds the work and actually elevates the outcome — freeing people to add context and deliver better advice, faster.”
 
While Copilot has been a boon in many elements of First West’s business, the credit union is also careful in how it is deployed, given the safety of its members’ data. The credit union is on a closed system, which means member data is not exposed to the outside world. And until proper procedures are in place, some data will not be used in the agents being built at the organization.
 
“We’re accelerating with intention,” Jaggers says. “Before anything touches an agent, we make sure the content is clean, owned and governed — and we keep the deployment in a closed environment. It protects privacy, improves answer quality and builds trust. The bonus is cultural: better conversations about how we manage data and who’s responsible for it.”
 

The future of financial services

First West has taken a strong first step in its digital transformation, but there’s plenty more work to do. One factor about the Canadian credit union system is its spirit of collaboration. So even though First West is the market leader in its use of AI, it doesn’t mean they’ve left everyone else in the dust.
 
The First West leadership team says that working with other financial institutions to share their learnings and look for areas of connection is part of their DNA, and that in the long term, working together can only help the financial future of all members of credit unions.
 
“The beauty of the cooperative system is that we share,” Brodeur says. “We don’t see other credit unions as competitors but as peers — and when we share what works, the whole ecosystem improves. That means exchanging practical playbooks — governance guardrails, training tips and service patterns — so others can adapt them quickly. When this type of collaboration happens, everyone wins.”
 
The next step for First West on their journey is making sure more members get personalized attention. Currently, about 30% of the credit union’s members have a portfolio that assigns them to a financial advisor who checks in with them on a semi-routine basis.
 
The hope is that with Copilot freeing up advisors’ time by helping them reduce or eliminate administrative duties, more members have a chance to receive one-on-one financial advice. Additionally, First West hopes to use AI to touch other members who may not need detailed advice in the early stages of their financial journey through digital solutions and its Member Advice Center.
 
“For me the big question is – how do we build a future-ready business where everyone can flourish?” Skinner says. “If Copilot helps our advisors save time that they would have spent on the administrative side, that has a huge impact on their ability to deepen relationships with our members and provide even better financial advice.
 
According to the CEO, “AI amplifies what matters most — human advice. It enables us to deliver more value, with greater precision, and tailor every interaction to members’ unique needs.”

Top image: CEO Launi Skinner and chief technology officer Darrell Jaggers have shared their learnings using Copilot with other credit unions across Canada. Photo by Brian Howell.