Truelson Brings EFT Expertise to Aimbridge to Shore Up Programs, Products for CUs

DENVER – The Aimbridge Group has a new member of its management team – Chris Truelson – and as the person responsible for overseeing the company’s regional vice presidents who work with the credit union industry, Truelson will be leveraging his experience in financial services to work with product providers to develop and maintain competitive products for The Aimbridge Group’s CU and dealer partners. Known for his expertise in electronic funds transfer services, Truelson has worked in the third party processing arena for 11 years. Immediately before coming to Aimbridge, he was director of sales and marketing for Total Systems Inc. (TSYS), a leader in global electronic payment services. Prior to that he was the national sales manager of ATM processing services at the Network Services Division for U.S. Bancorp. He has been published in various publications, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s ATM & Debit Card Industry white paper. Truelson said Aimbridge is focused on expanding the existing markets it’s in – Colorado, Florida (4 markets), Missouri, Michigan (2 markets), Texas, and Ohio (4 markets) – by adding more credit unions to its existing programs and branching out beyond the areas it’s currently doing business in such as Dallas/Fort Worth and expanding into nearby metros, like San Antonio. Using the same technologies, “our goal is to go into an area that has the capability when using aggregated opportunities, to achieve significant scale in that market for credit unions to be considered the primary lenders in that market,” said Truelson. “We’re always looking for efficiency in a market, those are the ones we target,” he added. With indirect lending, that translates into Aimbridge trying to standardize as much as possible `to create a program that’s easy and simple for the dealerships,” Truelson said. “Overcoming dealer objections is something we’ve worked hard to do.” To help participating credit unions improve their profitability from indirect lending and to help them recover as much money as possible from repossessed vehicles, Aimbridge began a disposition service about a year ago. Truelson stressed that the company itself doesn’t do repossession, but when a credit union repossesses a vehicle, it can bring it to an Aimbridge facility which runs private auctions “as the vehicles come in.” Aimbridge currently has facilities for disposition services in Tampa, Dallas and Denver. It is looking to add more facilities in the next 12 months. -