SunCorp Corporate CU will revisit its dual name policy

ARVADA, Colo. – The $1.9 billion SunCorp Corporate CU is going to take another look at its innovative plan to allow Rocky Mountain Corporate to keep using the Rocky Mountain name post-merger. When SunCorp announced that it would be merging with Rocky Mountain in late January, one of the more interesting aspects of the merger was that although SunCorp would be the surviving corporate, each would retain their names and branding strategies. The idea was that neither corporate would lose the brand recognition they had built. Rocky Mountain’s name was relatively new. It was formerly known as Corporate Central CU of Utah until it changed to Rocky Mountain in 2000 to better reflect its FOM. But some costs have come up due to the separate names. “It’s worked very well so far, but we are running into some additional costs and complications that we didn’t anticipate, so we’re going to re-evaluate this,” said Eric Kenealy, president/CEO of SunCorp. Kenealy said a lot of the costs are coming from the computer systems having to do such things as print two different sets of statements, and notification advices. The corporate also is facing some legal delays with using separate names. “We’re going through the legal hoops in Utah trying to get our DBA (doing business as) papers filed,” said Brandt Peterson, COO of SunCorp. Kenealy said at this point it’s too early to tell what will happen, or what the timeframe will be on any name changes. He did say that the economies of scale that were touted when this merger was announced have already materialized. “I think we’ve increased yield from three to five basis points. The system conversion is going to save us a lot of money. We’re saving with the bond coverage. CUNA Mutual is working with us on pro-rating the premium of the unused portion of Rocky Mountain’s bond. Telephone costs will go down. There are so many different ways to save,” said Kenealy. Over at the Rocky Mountain division, the economies of scale are helping it offer more products. “In the last year we went from $990 million to $1.95 billion. It allows us to offer a much wider array of offerings and specials because we can take more positions,” said Peterson. The Rocky Mountain division has also been able to add another sales person to its staff to help sell the new offerings to CUs. Kenealy said another tough issue being faced post-merger is pricing of correspondent services. “Merging the two pricing schedules is very challenging. We’re analyzing the pricing of both corporates. The objective is to ensure that overall prices remain the same or come down. But we have a double whammy to deal with. Some suppliers have increased their prices and we’re each on different pricing schedules,” said Kenealy. [email protected]