EasCorp Sells its Successful Investment Advisory CUSO to CUSO's Management Team

WORBURN, Mass. – After 10 years, EasCorp has decided to sell its popular investment advisory CUSO. The corporate has sold ALM First Financial Advisors, LLC, based out of Dallas to the firm’s president Emily Hollis and two other members of the management team, Tom Manley and Angela Calvert. ALM First has been quite a success story since its founding in 1995. It currently has 100 CU clients and close to $8 billion under management. EasCorp and ALM First have not severed their ties altogether. EasCorp will be providing consulting services for ALM First. A joint letter from ALM First and EasCorp was sent out to all of its clients explaining the deal. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Why would EasCorp sell such a successful CUSO? EasCorp SVP Alan Bernstein said the timing was right and the two groups had different ideas about the future of ALM First and what products and services it should focus on. Bernstein said EasCorp will continue to provide ALM services of its own. “EasCorp is 27 years old, from day one through now and forever we will be in the ALM business. I mean we’re in that business and we’ll continue to be in that business. We have some different ideas about what credit unions will need in the future,” said Bernstein. One of the products that caused some disagreement between ALM First and EasCorp was discretionary management. This would give ALM First authority to buy or sell assets for a credit union without consent for each individual trade as long as they fell within terms of the discretionary agreement. “We wanted to do things out of the corporate realm from EasCorp’s perspective, There’s a slight difference in philosophy. We want to be more encompassing, getting into other product lines like discretionary management,” said Tom Manley, managing director of ALM First. Bernstein said the separation was amicable and will benefit EasCorp’s bottomline, which benefits its credit unions. EasCorp plans to use the proceeds from the sale for R&D for new credit union services. Hollis is ecstatic about her new ownership role. “I’m so thrilled it’s been like Christmas all over again. This is all so new to us. I think after we have gotten our feet back on the ground from the excitement, we’ll be coming out with some new credit union products,” said Hollis. ALM First has 18 employees, including five advisors who lead a team to handle each CU account. Teams include a financial analyst, investment accountant and trader. Each team handles a geographic region of the country. While Hollis said there are no definitive plans for new products for the firm, she confirmed that ALM First plans to get deeper into discretionary services and also derivative advising. Both Hollis and Manley were with ALM First from day one. In fact the two worked at Southwest Corporate in the early `90s together and left to join Wall Street firm Kidder Peabody to form a credit union unit. That was eventually bought out by Paine Webber. Their next stop was ALM First. Interestingly, the new ALM First owners used the business lending CUSO of Texans CU, Texans Commercial Capital, to fund the purchase of ALM First. ALM First has also moved its accounts to Credit Union of Texas. Hollis said it was important to the new owners to give credit unions their business on this deal. Hollis said she has the utmost respect for EasCorp and what they’ve done for ALM First. “EasCorp was very smart, they came in at the right time. I think they’re selling at the right time. I hope we’re buying at the right time. Their members are very much benefiting from this,” she said. ALM First works with about 16 brokers to conduct trades for its credit union clients. ALM First is strictly an advisory firm and works on a fee-based plan, not commission-based like most brokers, which they tout as an advantage because they don’t make money on credit union trading. [email protected]