Scandia Receives The American Standout Award at the 2026 Umbraco U.S. Partner Summit Awards

Why the OAS FCU Platform Earned The American Standout Award

Scandia was recognized by Umbraco, from among 70 U.S. partner submissions, for a website built to carry a credit union's member strategy.

Scandia Consulting, an Umbraco agency in the USA, has received The American Standout Award at the 2026 Umbraco U.S. Partner Summit Awards, presented in Chicago on September 30. Our entry was the new website for OAS Federal Credit Union, one of 70 case studies submitted by U.S. partners in the first year of the program.

About the awards

Umbraco created the U.S. Partner Summit Awards to bring more of the Codegarden spirit to the United States and to give the work of its U.S. partner community the recognition it deserves. Three awards were presented. The Stars, Stripes & AI Award, for a project that uses AI in a smart, practical, or creative way, went to Proworks for Mold Inspection Sciences. The CEO Award, selected by Umbraco leadership for vision, execution, and contribution to the ecosystem, went to Adage for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. The American Standout Award, given to a project that stands out in the U.S. market for its impact, execution, and overall quality, went to Scandia for OAS Federal Credit Union. We congratulate Proworks and Adage on their awards.

The sections below describe the OAS FCU project against each of the three criteria in that award description.

Impact

OAS Federal Credit Union is a Washington, D.C. credit union founded in 1962 by colleagues at the Organization of American States. It serves more than 8,500 members across 38 partner organizations, in English and Spanish. The new oasfcu.org launched on April 30, 2026, and the measured results are substantial. Publishing a rate change now takes under 30 minutes, compared with roughly two days of manual edits previously, a reduction of more than 90 percent. Disclosure-related content corrections fell by more than 80 percent once disclosures were bound to products. The guided account finder contributed to a 37 percent increase in online account-opening conversion, and site sessions grew 33 percent in the first quarter after launch.

The operational gains matter because of what they allow. A marketing team that no longer spends two days publishing a rate change has the capacity to improve member journeys, and that capacity was the purpose of the engagement.

Execution

Scandia led the engagement as a consulting partner first and an implementation partner second. No design work began until the member strategy had been documented and agreed. Discovery included a site analysis, a competitive analysis, an SEO audit, and a full content inventory, followed by seven member personas and wireframing that identified where content should adapt by segment and which data each interaction should produce. The brief from OAS FCU's marketing leadership was translated into five governing goals: guide members to the right decision, make the experience personal, create conversion opportunities, generate better data, and keep evolving without rebuilding.

Great websites are designed and built with longevity in mind. A thoughtful, strategic analysis phase establishes the foundation for everything that follows, creating a solution that not only serves the end user today, but can grow and adapt over time. We believe that includes the people who maintain the site just as much as the people who consume it. A website that is easy to use but challenging to manage will eventually become difficult to scale. A high-performing digital platform pairs an optimized user experience with an equally intentional editor experience: a CMS that is intuitive, efficient, and designed to make everyday changes simpler. When both are considered from the outset, you create more than a successful launch. You create a website positioned to evolve and deliver for years to come.

Farid Topchiev, Chief Product Officer, Scandia

The build followed from that work. Scandia implemented the platform on Umbraco CMS with English and Spanish as parallel content trees, migrated all content from WordPress with a complete redirect map, and trained the full OAS FCU team before go-live. Scandia continues to host and support the platform on managed Azure infrastructure.

Overall quality

Every major component of the platform exists because a strategy goal required it. The centralized rate manager holds each published rate as structured content, so one entry updates every page, table, and product card that references it, and mismatched rates across the site were eliminated. The disclosure system binds the correct disclosure to each product and page. Branch and ATM data is integrated with shared-branching and surcharge-free networks, including CO-OP, covering more than 35,000 fee-free ATMs. The guided account finder asks a prospective member a short set of questions and recommends the product that fits.

The design system was built as 69 widgets across five grid layouts, with approved design options set at the widget level. OAS FCU's team can compose, preview, and publish on-brand pages in both languages without a developer, and Umbraco Engage has collected behavioral data since launch to inform future personalization.

"The efficiencies mattered. But they weren't the strategy. The bigger value was having a platform that could make the strategy scalable. Scandia didn't just give us a better platform. They built the infrastructure that gave us the ability to think much bigger about what the digital experience could become."

Patricia Mercado, Marketing Director at OAS Federal Credit Union during the project

A foundation for what comes next

The platform launched as a foundation. Deeper personalization by persona, product recommendations, and connected forms are enabled by components already in production, and appointment scheduling and multi-step member journeys can be added to the platform without replacing it. That planning is the reason Scandia treats the consultative work before the build as the most valuable part of a project.

Eighteen years with the Umbraco community

Scandia was founded in 2008 and became an Umbraco Gold Partner in 2012. The firm authored the Umbraco User's Guide (Wrox, 2011) and organized the U.S. Umbraco developer conference from 2015 through 2019, at a time when few firms in the United States were building on the platform or supporting its community. Receiving this award from Umbraco after so many years of sustained investment in the partnership is especially gratifying for the Scandia team.

The award also arrives at the start of a new period for the industry. Scandia is pleased to take part in the current expansion of AI, and it intends to help shape how it and its clients adopt AI in their work over the coming months and years, continuing the strategy-first approach used for OAS FCU.

"We are honored to receive The American Standout Award from among 70 submissions across the U.S. Umbraco partner community, and we are grateful to the OAS FCU team for their partnership. This project showed what is possible when the member strategy is defined first and the platform is built to carry it. We also thank Umbraco for creating an awards program that recognizes the work of the U.S. partner community. We are also pleased to be part of this new era for the Umbraco community and to help our clients adopt AI in the years ahead."

Nik Wahlberg, CEO and Founder, Scandia Consulting

Read the case study

The full OAS FCU case study, including the strategy process, the platform architecture, and the results, is available at myscandia.com/projects/oas-fcu. Scandia works with credit unions and community banks in the same sequence, documenting and agreeing the member strategy first and building the platform to carry it. Organizations interested in that approach can contact Scandia to arrange a conversation.