Butke's Vision for SimpliCD Coming True as Brokered CD Product Penetrates Nearly 20% of Nation's Credit Unions

COLUMBUS, Ohio – When Corporate One decided to sell its popular SimpliCD product last year to a corporate network-owned CUSO, Corporate One President/CEO Lee Butke said the main reason was to get the product into the hands of more credit unions. The idea was if all corporates were co-agents of the product and sharing in its success, it would be easier to penetrate more credit unions. So far, so good, says Butke. “It’s been wildly successful. We’re hitting numbers of $3.5 billion in outstandings. We had a very aggressive goal to get the product into 25% of the nation’s credit unions by the end of this year. I think we’re going to hit that by the end of September,” said Butke. While Corporate One now shares ownership with all corporates, it does take care of most of the day-to-day work through a management agreement it has with the corporate-owned CUSO Primary Financial. Originally there was some question if Corporate One would sell the product to the corporate network-owned CUSO, at that time known as Corporate Exchange. Corporate Exchange was pushing for the sale, saying it would be in the best interest of corporates if they could all share in the success of the program. If a deal wasn’t going to happen, the corporate CUSO was planning on starting its own brokered CD product. Though it seemed like a pressuring move, Butke said he didn’t see it that way. Greg Moore, president/CEO of Georgia Central CU, and chairman of the corporate network CUSO was one of the driving forces for getting Corporate One on board. Eventually not only did Corporate One agree to sell SimpliCD to Corporate Exchange, but in turn Corporate Exchange decided to change its name to Primary Financial, Corporate One’s CUSO which ran SimpliCD, to maintain continuity. “It’s going a lot better than we expected. We’re exceeding all of our goals. We had our best month in March with $403 million in certificates sold. We have 2,400 credit unions using the service, which is like 18% of the total credit unions in the nation,” said Moore. Moore doesn’t think SimpliCD is topping out just yet. He said there are still a few corporates who haven’t rolled out the product. “I expect the volume to increase when they get going,” he said. Although Primary Financial is owned by all corporate credit unions, not every corporate offers SimpliCD. Empire Corporate for example has its own brokered CD product, and has yet to offer SimpliCD. However the corporate said at some point it may decide to move to SimpliCD. [email protected]