Chris Doner and the bank you remember to open

Chris Doner has a suggestion for credit unions hunting for new members: get to know the moving companies. Also the real estate agents, the apartment complexes and the homeowners associations. Perhaps send a welcome basket. For someone whose business sells digital banking software, it is an agreeably physical answer. Somewhere among the boxes and misplaced kettle, there may be a banking decision waiting to happen.

In August 2025, Doner described a survey his company had conducted years earlier about why people changed financial institutions. Moving was the most common answer. He found that revealing. Even with banking available remotely, people still wanted an institution nearby. His proposed response worked in both directions: welcome the newcomer, and remind the departing member that moving house need not mean moving their accounts.

That little argument makes a useful entrance to Doner’s working life. As founder and CEO of Access Softek, he deals in platforms, integrations and the machinery behind financial services. Yet the behavior that interests him can be as ordinary as changing addresses. The distance between a capable product and a useful relationship is where much of his attention lands.

Before the phone became the branch

Access Softek began in Berkeley, California, in 1986. Doner remains its CEO and owner four decades later. The business started in custom software development; mobile banking followed in 2005. Its history spans a period in which the place people went to manage money changed from a building to a computer, then to a device carried in a pocket.

One early assignment concerned a less glamorous difficulty: getting financial records from one program into another. In 2002, Microsoft announced that Access Softek had built conversion software for Money 2003. People switching from Quicken could bring their records along. Software migration sounds tidy until it is your transaction history, your categories and your carefully maintained accounts that must survive the journey.

The collaboration continued with Money 2004. Microsoft again credited Access Softek’s converter with making the transfer easier. Doner’s company occupied the space between a person’s existing habits and a new product’s promises. An attractive destination is only part of the sale; the luggage must arrive too.

There is a practical continuity between those desktop assignments and the company he runs today. Access Digital brings banking, account opening and lending together, with connections to specialist services. The screens have changed considerably. The problem of making separate pieces cooperate has proved more durable.

Five dollars, fewer detours

In 2018, Doner appeared alongside product director William Raymer at FinovateFall. Access Softek’s demonstration paired a white-label automated investment service with fraud controls. The investment proposition was about proximity: put investing alongside online and mobile banking, rather than ask people to manage another application and another password. The institution’s relationship with its customer could extend into another part of financial life.

A concrete example arrived in September 2021. Mountain America Credit Union launched MyInvest, developed with Access Softek Advisory Services and DriveWealth. Members could start with $5, make a single transfer or arrange automatic deposits, and reach the service through the credit union’s digital banking. Doner emphasized opening investment access to members with smaller balances and those getting started.

The $5 matters as a product decision. A service can be technically available while remaining distant from the person it is meant to serve. A small opening amount and a familiar place to find the service reduce two different obstacles. Neither guarantees that someone will become an investor. Both make the first step easier to contemplate.

Doner returned to investment tools in a 2022 CU 2.0 podcast conversation, discussing automated advice and self-directed brokerage for credit unions. The business question was straightforward: if members go elsewhere to invest, what other parts of their financial lives might follow? A savings relationship can become a rather lonely outpost when everything around it moves.

A login is a modest accomplishment

By July 2025, Doner was writing about a measurement problem. Credit unions tracked how many members logged in, but he wanted them to examine use of individual features. Someone may open an application every week and still know very little about what it offers. Counting the visit leaves that distinction unresolved.

He contrasted mobile check deposit, which he said attracted users quickly once a button appeared, with features that needed sustained explanation. Access Softek released educational campaigns with new versions. His point was that an unused capability contributes little to the member’s experience, however much effort went into building it. A release note is a poor substitute for discovery.

This is a demanding position for a software founder to take. It extends the job beyond delivering a function to helping people recognize its value. It also makes the definition of success awkwardly specific. Which feature? Used by whom? How often? Those questions are less comfortable than a rising total of registered users, and rather more useful.

His wider commercial work reflects that concern with reaching people inside the digital relationship. In 2025, Access Softek partnered with Pulsate to offer its Opportunities Engine to Access Digital clients. The announced purpose was to make communications more relevant and timely. The test implied by Doner’s writing remains whether that communication helps a member do something they actually want to do.

The competition is on the next screen

In another July 2025 essay, Doner laid out an everyday financial life scattered among specialist applications: accounting in one place, international transfers in another, retail payments elsewhere, investments somewhere else again. A credit union might retain the direct deposit while receiving only a fraction of its member’s attention. He argued that this fragmentation mattered alongside the familiar contest for deposits and loans.

The implication was personal before it was technical. When a member next needed a car loan, the service already occupying their attention might get the first opportunity. Doner wanted credit unions to offer a broader home for digital financial activity. Keeping an account open and remaining someone’s first thought are different achievements.

His interest in the human end of a digital connection also surfaced in a 2021 company survey of 500 consumers. Nearly 65 percent had used live video communication during the previous year, while fewer than 3 percent had used it with a bank or credit union. More than a quarter thought video could help resolve problems faster. Doner argued for bringing that familiar means of conversation into banking.

Taken together, these arguments suggest a founder interested in the points where technology meets habit. A member can move house, overlook a feature or seek help from another application. Each looks like a small event. Enough of them determine where the relationship lives.

Let the vendor ask a question

Doner’s impatience with friction extends to how institutions buy software. In November 2024, he criticized requests for proposals that could run to more than a thousand questions. A questionnaire can examine known requirements exhaustively while missing a capability its authors have never considered. A very long form can still have a blind spot.

His remedy was procedural and inexpensive: ask vendors to propose questions, add the useful ones, then circulate the revised request. The suggestion gives unfamiliar ideas a chance to enter the comparison before the demonstration stage. It is also a tidy admission that even a diligent buyer cannot specify every worthwhile possibility in advance.

In a separate public post, he urged credit unions to inspect integration terms before signing. Could a third party do the work? Were the necessary interfaces available? Who controlled the release date? He warned that an appealing new service could become a long wait once the institution was committed to its banking vendor.

These are revealing concerns for someone selling a platform. They place control, scheduling and the ability to connect with others alongside the feature list. A partnership is easier to celebrate on signing day than during the month someone needs an unfamiliar system connected. Doner’s questions belong to that second occasion.

A colleague called EvanAI

His enthusiasm for AI comes with similarly concrete examples. In November 2024, Doner encouraged credit unions to experiment with assistants grounded in their own documents: policies, procedures and other institutional material. He described Access Softek using several assistants internally, including one called EvanAI to answer questions about a product managed by its human namesake.

It is a pleasantly unceremonious detail. The future of work, in this telling, includes a tool with a colleague’s name and a specific set of questions to handle. Doner’s suggested starting point was an experiment attached to actual work, such as helping a call center find answers. His larger forecasts could be expansive; the example was small enough to picture.

He had already been presenting AI-related fraud technology in 2018. That longer history gives the newer writing some context: the tools and interfaces evolve, while the interest in applying them inside banking persists. His public position is forward-looking, but his examples keep returning to a task, a user and a place where effort might be saved.

“It is all about convenience.”Chris Doner / 2021

Forty years, and another agreement

The recent company record supplies a quieter measure of that persistence. In January 2026, Illinois State Credit Union selected Access Digital, with plans covering online and mobile banking, fraud controls, engagement and real-time payments. In May, University Credit Union in Maine announced a five-year renewal and a planned transition to Access Digital. The renewal announcement expected a late-June launch; it described a plan, rather than reporting a completed launch.

The people around Doner matter to this work. The current leadership team includes Jim Reinhart as CFO and COO, Tino Lamberti as chief technology officer and Katherine Lee as chief marketing officer. A business with four decades behind it necessarily depends on more than the founder’s ideas. The agreements, implementations and continuing support give those ideas their daily consequences.

Doner’s advice to startups in 2020 was compact: “Find a niche. Avoid venture capital. Be completely customer-focused.” It fits a founder still running the company he began in 1986. His business serves institutions whose names the end user knows, while its own software works behind the experience.

Return to the welcome basket and the argument becomes easy to recognize. Doner can discuss automated investing, AI assistants and connected banking platforms, then notice that a person unpacking in a new town might want a local institution. The practical question survives each change in technology: when someone has a reason to act, will your service be the one they remember?