NACUSO Forms Subsidiary to Connect CUs With CUSOs
The for-profit NACUSO Business Services allows for virtual collaboration in between NACUSO’s in-person conferences.
NACUSO, the national association for CUSOs, has formed a for-profit, wholly-owned subsidiary called NACUSO Business Services, Inc. (NBS), which provides a virtual platform for credit unions and CUSOs to connect and collaborate with one another, the association announced Tuesday.
Guy Messick, an attorney specializing in solutions for credit unions and CUSOs, will serve as CEO of NBS.
According to the announcement, NBS was created to fill the networking gap that exists in between each of NACUSO’s annual networking conferences, where credit union professionals typically connect with innovators and entrepreneurs to discover or create new opportunities and solutions. NBS has developed two initiatives – the NACUSO Marketplace, a digital platform that enables NACUSO members that provide services to credit unions to post information about their services and value proposition; and NBS Promotion Partners, which will spotlight and help accelerate the progress of newer CUSOs with especially innovative and/or collaborative business models.
The NACUSO Marketplace is free for both credit unions and listing CUSOs to use, allows CUSOs to list extensive information about their services, helps connect credit unions to CUSO investment opportunities and enables access to CUSO service discounts for credit unions that are NACUSO members. “Given the amount of information that a member can post, the listings are more akin to a virtual sales booth,” according to the announcement.
NBS’s first Promotion Partner is CU Capital Management LLC (CUCM), a CUSO that provides a sale/leaseback network for credit unions. In a sale/leaseback transaction, credit unions that own an office building, operational center and/or branch network that has appreciated in value sells its real estate and leases it back, leading to an increase in capital without operational disruption. CUCM creates CUSOs to purchase and lease back properties to selling credit unions, keeping the profits within the credit union industry.
“Since CU Capital Management connects the selling credit unions with the buying CUSOs, there are no real estate broker fees to the selling credit union,” Messick said in a video posted to NBS’s website. “CU Capital Management’s sale/leaseback network is the poster child for credit union collaboration.”
NBS’s website is live and was developed with assistance from the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based, core solutions CUSO CU*Answers.