Meet Blesson Abraham - CEO of Aviary AI
Aviary CEO, Blesson Abraham, understands the problems credit unions face because he’s faced those problems. His journey began at Baxter Credit Union where he spent the first leg of his career in every department of the institution. While working with the data analytics team, he identified a unique opportunity that kicked off his career as an entrepreneur. Blesson co-founded his first startup focused on providing analytics as a service to credit unions (SavvyIntel). Through keen insight and hard work, Blesson and the SavvyIntel team were able to grow the startup until it was eventually acquired by industry giant TruStage (Formerly CUNA Mutual Group).
However, even after a successful exit, Blesson wasn’t done innovating. He had witnessed firsthand the challenges many consumers faced when dealing with collections debt and poor credit. Blesson wanted to find a way to help them get back on track. That spark of inspiration drove Blesson to launch his next venture - a startup called Cambio.
Cambio, backed by the prestigious startup accelerator, Y-Combinator, was dedicated specifically to helping people resolve collections debt and improve their credit scores. But Blesson and his team wanted to do more than just create another debt management program. They set out to leverage cutting edge AI and machine learning to build something truly unique - an AI-powered debt negotiation assistant.
As Blesson describes it,
“The Cambio bot could understand context, hold natural conversations, and helped out customers negotiate with collectors. The result was that it was able to deliver - both in terms of savings and improved credit scores - were remarkable."
In fact, the Cambio debt negotiation bot worked so well it started garnering attention across the wider credit union industry. Industry executives were fascinated by the technology and its potential applications. For Blesson, that interest sparked an idea for a new venture - one that would focus specifically on bringing the power of AI conversations to credit unions.
That new startup is Aviary. As CEO, Blesson is drawing on his over 15 years of credit union industry experience to build the industry’s first outbound AI voice platform purpose-built for credit unions.
So what makes Aviary so unique? According to Blesson:
“Our voice agents make outbound calls to members, understand natural language, and have intelligent conversations focused on things like increasing card activation or cross-selling products and services. This helps credit unions drive revenue, boost loyalty and deliver an amazing member experience - all at scale without increasing costs."
Aviary isn’t just leveraging existing AI either. Blesson’s technical team, which includes veteran data scientists from Cambio, has developed an industry-leading generative language model exclusively focused on credit union member conversations. This proprietary model has been explicitly trained on real world credit union data to enable the most natural, human-like interactions possible.
“Credit unions ultimately compete on service and relationships rather than rates or fees. So if we can help them strengthen loyalty and improve satisfaction through incredible member experiences, they’ll win more business in the long run.”
For Blesson, Aviary presents an opportunity to transform the very nature of member relationships in the credit union industry. He envisions a future where every credit union leverages the power of AI to provide timely, personalized and proactive guidance to each member. This will help turn passive account holders into engaged, lifelong promoters.
“I’ve been working with credit unions for over 15 years now. I know first-hand how much they really care about service, relationships and improving people’s financial lives. Aviary’s AI solutions will empower them to take that service-focused mission to an entirely new level. That’s why I’m so passionate about this business and its potential.”
That passion is what drives Blesson every day as he leads Aviary into the future.
