Saris and GoWest Solutions: What This Partnership Means for Credit Unions in the West

I spend most of my week talking with credit union leaders across the West, and one thing I've heard consistently over the past year is a version of the same question: "Where do we even start with AI?"

The board or the CEO has often mandated something, but the teams asked to figure it out don't have a technical background, don't want to be the first credit union to try a new tool, and don't have hours in the day to run a full vendor evaluation on top of everything else on their plates. That's the reality most of the credit union leaders I talk to are working inside.

That's exactly where our new partnership with GoWest Solutions comes in.

A shorter path to a serious AI evaluation

GoWest Solutions has spent years forming key relationships with technology partners so that member credit unions across the region can evaluate options with more confidence and less noise. The leaders I work with often tell me they call peers before buying anything technology-related, and GoWest Solutions plays that same role at scale: a trusted filter that signals the vendors worth taking seriously.

Being named a GoWest Solutions partner means Saris has taken that extra step. GoWest-affiliated credit unions across the region now have direct access to Saris, creating a streamlined pathway to explore and evaluate its AI-powered solutions.

What that access actually looks like

When I walk credit union leaders through what Saris does, the conversation usually lands in the same place: their team is spending hours a day on the mechanical work that fills a back-office day: document review, data validation across systems, running policy checks, moving files through the LOS and back into the core. All of it is necessary; none of it is judgment work, and all of it is what agentic AI is actually good at.

Through this partnership, GoWest-affiliated credit unions now have a shorter path to seeing that for themselves. That includes:

• Automation across up to 70% of lending-related tasks
• Operational cost reductions of up to 35%
• Processing times that go from hours to minutes for high-volume workflows
• Scaling operations without adding headcount

None of it involves rip-and-replace of existing systems. Instead, Saris integrates with the cores and LOS platforms our customers already use, our agents are trained on each credit union's specific policies and workflows during implementation, and human oversight is built into every meaningful decision point.

Why this matters for the region

The credit unions I work with in the West are among the most thoughtful, community-focused institutions I've encountered in my career. Many of them run tight teams, serve specific communities, and hold a level of member relationship that larger banks structurally cannot. The work I want AI to do for these teams is not the work their people do best. It is the work that gets in the way of the work their people do best.

That is the partnership. Saris handles the mechanical work between judgment calls, and GoWest Solutions is now the shortest path for a member credit union to evaluate whether that fits inside their own institution.

How to get started

If you're a GoWest-affiliated credit union interested in learning more, reach out to the GoWest Solutions team or contact me directly. The first conversation is a deep analysis of what makes sense for your institution’s goals. No cost, no commitment. We walk through your back-office day with your team and share where we think Saris can help most.