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

The recognition honors the new OAS Federal Credit Union website, built on Umbraco as a platform for the credit union's member strategy

CUMBERLAND, R.I., Oct. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Scandia Consulting has been named the recipient of The American Standout Award at the 2026 Umbraco U.S. Partner Summit Awards, in recognition of its work for OAS Federal Credit Union. Umbraco presented the awards on September 30 in Chicago, as part of the first U.S. Partner Summit.

Umbraco established the awards this year to recognize the work of its U.S. partner community, and Scandia's entry was one of 70 case studies submitted by U.S. partners. The American Standout Award is given to a project that stands out in the U.S. market for its impact, execution, and overall quality. Scandia's entry described the new oasfcu.org. Umbraco also presented the Stars, Stripes & AI Award, for a project that uses AI in a smart, practical, or creative way, to Proworks for Mold Inspection Sciences, and the CEO Award, selected by Umbraco leadership for vision, execution, and contribution to the ecosystem, to Adage for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Scandia congratulates both winners.

OAS Federal Credit Union engaged Scandia to build a digital platform that could carry its member strategy for years, with the new website as the first expression of that platform. The goals were to guide members to the right decision, personalize the experience, create conversion opportunities, produce better data, and allow the platform to keep evolving without a rebuild.

Scandia led the engagement as a consulting partner first and an implementation partner second. Discovery, competitive and SEO analysis, a full content inventory, and seven member personas were completed before design began. The platform was then built on Umbraco CMS with Umbraco Engage, using English and Spanish as parallel content trees, a library of 69 widgets across five grid layouts, a centralized rate manager, disclosures bound to products, and branch and ATM data integrated with CO-OP and other shared-branching networks. The site launched on April 30, 2026, after a complete migration from WordPress.

Farid Topchiev, Chief Product Officer at Scandia, was instrumental in the architecture and overall delivery of the platform.

"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 Consulting

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 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

"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

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. The award also comes at the start of a new period for the industry. Scandia 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.

The full case study is available at myscandia.com/projects/oas-fcu.

About Scandia Consulting

Scandia Consulting is an Umbraco Gold Partner, founded in 2008. The firm provides strategy, CMS development, migrations, and integrations for financial services, manufacturing, and other industries. Scandia works with credit unions and community banks in a strategy-first sequence, documenting and agreeing the member strategy before the platform is built to carry it. Learn more at myscandia.com.

About OAS Federal Credit Union

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, and holds more than $290 million in assets. Learn more at oasfcu.org.

Media contact: Nik Wahlberg, CEO and Founder | [email protected] | 401-566-3000

SOURCE Scandia Consulting