California Credit Unions Announce Big Merger

California’s largest credit union, the $14.8 billion SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union in Santa Ana, and the $1.9 billion Schools Financial Credit Union in Sacramento said Tuesday they have reached a tentative agreement to merge by the end of the year.

The combined credit union will operate under the SchoolsFirst FCU name and charter. Bill Cheney, president/CEO of SchoolsFirst FCU, will serve as president/CEO of the combined cooperative, which will maintain its headquarters in Santa Ana. Tim Marriott, president/CEO of Schools Financial CU, will join the SchoolsFirst FCU executive leadership team.

If the proposed consolidation is approved by Schools Financial CU members and state and NCUA regulators, SchoolsFirst will manage $16.8 billion assets, 63 branches and 2,079 employees who will serve 997,576 members in Northern and Southern California. The combined organization will also manage nearly $2 billion in capital and $6.4 billion in investments.

In addition to the 63 branches, members will have access to more than 300 credit union ATMs spanning California and the 30,000 fee-free  CO-OP ATMs nationwide.

“Really what this (merger) is about is to better serve the school employees throughout the state,” Cheney explained. “Both SchoolsFirst and Schools Financial have charters that allow us to serve the entire state, and we’ve just been focusing on our own regions for many, many years, and now we think together we can serve the state.”

He added, “In particular, through the services we provide through CUSOs to schools districts and through state wide associations of school employees and administrators, the credit union has been getting more and more requests from people up north to join the credit union and we were having to turn them away. So this allows us to do a better job of serving the state and  adding the branches, the members and the team members of Schools Financial. We know we can be stronger together.”

Since both credit unions have served the state’s educational community since the 1930s when they were chartered, the CEOs pointed to “strong synergies the merger would achieve to benefit members of both institutions.”

Both credit unions have developed and maintain strong relationships with many K-12 school districts, community colleges and universities, and school employee associations throughout the Golden State and have earned reputations for providing exceptional service to their members.

“It’s hard to imagine two more similar institutions as far as culture, philosophy, and how we serve members,” Marriott noted.

Although Marriott’s executive position has not been finalized yet, employees from both credit unions will be retained.

“Once we saw this (merger) would be a great thing for our memberships, we tried to figure out a way to do it in a way that wouldn’t impact our teams,” Marriott said. “The commitment is that every single employee will have a position in the combined organization.”

He said employee reaction about the merger has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I think that combining the teams present us with some interesting opportunities that could allow us to allocate some additional resources in technology development and bringing solutions to market faster,” Marriott said. “Because we really do have two great teams, it’s really exciting to think about what we can accomplish by putting them together.”