PSCU Pays $37.4 Million in Annual Dividends

PSCU announced it is paying its member credit unions $37.4 million in annual dividends for 2020 with 30% being distributed in cash.

The payments CUSO based in St. Petersburg, Fla., announced Dec. 15 that its cash distribution to its credit union owners this year is $20.5 million, including $6.7 million in capital credits and $2.6 million in revolving funds, which it said represented the largest cash payout to owners in the history of the cooperative.

This year’s patronage dividend is the highest since 2013, when PSCU paid $38.9 million. Last year, PSCU paid $25.9 million in patronage dividends, or 3.5% of its average assets of $739.2 million for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Since its founding, PSCU has distributed more than $577.6 million in patronage dividends, with 51% paid in cash.

Revenue in the 2020 fiscal year was $582.5 million, 16.7% more than in fiscal year 2019.

President/CEO Chuck Fagan said PSCU continues to invest “a significant portion” of revenue in capital expenditures.

“In a year in which the credit union philosophy of ‘people helping people’ has taken on even deeper meaning, our commitment to the success of our owner credit unions and their members has not wavered,” Fagan said.

“Together, we have partnered to meet these challenges head-on and have become an even stronger cooperative,” he said.

The fiscal year marked the first of a three-year, $100 million investment announced in late 2019 — the largest ever approved by PSCU’s Board of Directors. Capital spending was $86.4 million in the three years ending Sept. 30, 2019. Fiscal 2020 capital spending has fueled multiple initiatives, including:

• Continued growth of Lumin Digital, PSCU’s cloud-native digital banking platform, with nine credit unions and more than 300,000 users currently on the platform and eight more implementations in process.
• Deployment of additional robotic process automation and machine learning capabilities to improve efficiency and speed.
• Exponential growth in contactless, with PSCU slated to produce more than 6.8 million new contactless plastics — the most significant volume in the credit union space — and deliver them to more than 100 credit unions to support natural and mass reissuance strategies in the current calendar year.
• Onboarding of more than 900 Jack Henry & Associates financial institutions, representing over 15 million accounts.