Orlando, FL (April 26, 2022)
The tenth annual Next Big Idea Competition took place on Tuesday April 26, during the NACUSO Network Conference at Walt Disney World Resorts. Six finalists were chosen by a selection committee as they presented innovation and drive for advancements within the industry thus making it to the top six out of twenty-six competitors. It was a close competition with a voting difference of 2% separating winner and runner-up.
Ultimately claiming the winning title of the 2022 Next Big Idea Competition was Illuma Labs who presented on stage with Posh Technologies and received 29% of attendee votes. Illuma and Posh have partnered together to enable credit union members to securely access their accounts by voice recognition verification. This is a result of integrating the Illuma Shield™ passive voice authentication solution with conversational AI IVR from Posh.
Coming in close behind was QCash Financial who was named the runner-up of this year’s competition. QCash puts members first with their innovative, relationship-based lending platform that provides no credit check loans in under 60 seconds. The idea is to work with credit unions to advance financial inclusion through access to lending resources when members need it most.
In addition, this is the third year in which CO-OP Solutions sponsored the competition with a total prize pool offering of $10,000. Illuma Labs received $7,500 as the first-place winner of the competition and the remaining $2,500 was awarded to QCash Financial as the second-place winner.
Special recognition goes out to the additional four finalists: ChangEd CUSO, Dora, JUDI.AI, and Quilo. Additional coverage related to the competition and the NACUSO Network Conference will be released at nacuso.org in the coming weeks.
The 2023 Next Big Idea Competition will be held at the Encore Las Vegas Resort in April of next year, during the next NACUSO Network Conference.
