A CUNA Mutual Group tablet application that helps credit union members plan for retirement security has won a Bank Insurance and Securities Association Technology Innovation Award. CUNA Mutual’s broker/dealer, CUNA Brokerage Services Inc. is using the Zone tablet app to present investment options for CUNA Mutual’s registered index annuity Members Zone Annuity using understandable terms and visuals.
The award recognizes leadership in the advancement of the financial services industry’s products, services and platforms through technology innovation, CUNA Mutual said. The Zone provides a tool for an advisor to present investment options. It presents CUNA Mutual’s Members Zone Annuity in a web application optimized for the iPad. The Zone creates a participatory experience. The customer designs a personal zone of risk and reward, and then uses it to evaluate how the annuity might perform over time by using hypothetical investment returns and market scenarios.
Within the Zone, the advisor and customer interact with animated graphics and icons, recognizing the consequences of investment choices through the visual “zone” display, CUNA Mutual said. The Zone uses technology designed to look and feel like a traditional app, but actually runs as a single page application (SPA). This decreases the time-intensive server calls by using JavaScript, and preloads 95 percent of the application and data into the local cache, CUNA Mutual said.
