Tom Dorety, CEO of the $5.5 billion Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union in Tampa, Fla., told Credit Union Times on Friday that Suncoast has been approved to become a state charter.

“We had to hire an outside firm to do an independent election and we did that and they validated the election. Obviously, we can't have anything to do with it,” said Dorety on Friday.

“We sent out e-mails and mail ballots to over 500,000 members and we received a majority vote,” he said.

Voting concluded on Thursday and the official results came in on Friday. In total, Dorety said, 77% of Suncoast's members who voted were in favor of switching from a federal to state charter.

The state charter enables us to move forward with a community charter in all of these counties along the west coast of Florida that we already serve. We are truly a community-based financial institution – the largest headquartered on the west coast in fact,” Dorety told Credit Union Times.

“Our goal is to focus as much as we possibly can on the communities that we serve and become entrenched in those communities,” he said.

Dorety said he expects the conversion to take place at the first of the year.  The credit union's new name will be Suncoast Credit Union. Suncoast was originally chartered as the Hillsborough County Teachers Credit Union in January 1934.