DENVER—With Chuck Fagan kicking off VeleraLIVE Tuesday by sharing that the combined PSCU/Co-Op organization now supports over 4,000 financial institutions and 126 million credit union members, the Velera President and CEO Wednesday spoke with CUToday.info about many of the reasons for that success.
“It's a culmination of bringing two great industry assets—Co-Op and PSCU— together, and now having that expanded reach, the expanded toolbox that the two organizations collectively bring together,” Fagan told CUToday.info during the event held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center here. “And, the financial strength we, as a combined organization, bring.”
Fagan said the CUSO has the strongest financials in the history of either organization.
“That’s putting us in a position to be fast,” he said. “Velocity is a key thing. In fact it's ‘Velocity for a New Era’ that is the theme of our conference. We think that's an advantage we can bring to credit unions. That investment discipline, alongside of the fact we work with over 4,000 financial institutions, is also leading the fintech community to want to come through us. They see us as that that entry point, and being able to utilize our distribution system to get out to all of these credit union endpoints.”
All of that collectively has raised Velera’s level of momentum and technology capability.
“Not only is that benefiting credit unions now, but is setting us up for a really good partnership in the future,” Fagan said.
What if Co-Op and PSCU had not combined?
“Everyone is better off now,” Fagan said. “For example, PSCU did not have shared branching or the ATM network, and vice versa. Co-Op didn't have TriVerity, Lumin Digital, Juniper Payments and some of the other areas that PSCU has invested in.
“What credit now have access to by having the consolidated organization is fewer endpoints to package together for an experience for their employees or their members,” Fagan said. “They can get it from one shop, and in doing so have a much better experience for their members.”
In the first annual meeting of the combined organization, an area-wide power outage demonstrated the value of partnerships and the cooperative philosophy, Fagan said.
“Sadly, yesterday, we had no electricity at our meeting location that delayed the start of the meeting 2:00,” Fagan said. “But what happened in the morning was so incredible—with all of the credit unions collaborating, getting together with the Velera team members, just learning more about the capabilities of our company and how they can best utilize what we bring to the table to improve experiences. It was really cool to see.”