Vantage West Credit Union

Vantage West Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Arizona with $2.7 billion in assets, 20 locations, and 175,000 members. Founded in 1955 in a one-room barrack at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base with the mission to help Tucson’s airmen and their families. In their beginning years, they served under 600 members and $60,000 in assets. By the end of the 1960s, they had nearly 14,000 members. And the growth has never stopped over the past 60 years.

But Vantage West has never expanded just for the sake of growing membership. They expand to offer more Arizonans a better banking experience, as well as create more opportunities for their current members to experience the Vantage West difference. 

In 2020, Vantage West CU decided it was time for another rapid expansion, and looking to make a bigger name for itself, the decision was made to evolve their retail presence through a series of transformed branches—10 to be exact. 

Dubbed the 10 x 22 Expansion Strategy, Vantage West was on a mission to expand the network by 10 new and transformed locations in just 2 years.

With an eye on providing an interactive member experience, their new branches needed to have the right design elements, technology, and even people and processes to deliver on their impressive initiatives.

Instead of working with a list of 5+ vendors to make this happen, Vantage West CU decided to find a single company. And with a project of such a large scale, not any firm would do. After an extensive RFP process, Vantage West knew that DBSI was the only firm that could provide everything it needed.

Concept to Approval in 8 Hours

When it comes to branch network transformation, especially when building multiple branches at once, there are two key elements to being successful: consistency and scalability. To ensure both are accounted for and to provide some speed in the project, DBSI developing all the groundwork for the 10 branches with a Kit of Parts. This playbook outlined everything from the retail design elements to the furniture to the materials and colors and patterns to be used in the spaces. 

With the strategy and elements defined, DBSI wasted no time crafting floorplans for the first couple of branches. And by investing the time and doing the strategy upfront, floorplans were approved and signed off in one day. Even better? For the remaining branches, the entire design process, from creation to approval, took a mere 8 hours. Pretty impressive.