The Merge Heard ’Round the (Credit Union) World

Sometimes I like to give you all an inside look at how certain stories come from our typing fingers into your inboxes. In this case, I wanted to lay out some of the timing and dumb things that happened before and as the news of the CUNA-NAFCU merger came out on Aug. 1.

And then, I’d like to share some thoughts as we’re seeing things play out on the CU Times end.

More than a month (two months?) before the official announcement, there were grumblings and whispers of something happening at CUNA. These murmurs were vague and cryptic. Vague like in high school when the cool kids were planning a party, but didn’t dare tell those of us in the marching band any details for fear we’d show up and ruin their plans.

I spent those numerous weeks on the lookout for anything odd or strange or just out of place as it related to anything CUNA.

For instance, CUNA had a website outage one day for a couple of hours and then a few days later there was an email about CUNA changing its email marketing platform. Each time, I’d contact CUNA basically asking, “What’s up?”

Each response was nothing unusual, just deeply dull.

As the weeks passed and nothing happened and people went on vacation to Europe or wherever, I slowly began to think the murmurs coming from industry people were either not true or whatever it was had been cancelled or delayed.

At the end of July, the volume of those murmurs were turned up and it was suspected that what was happening was going to happen the first week of August.

Then, I received a call on July 31 from a source who laid it all out. The murmurs now made sense. And then I received another call from another source who also laid it all out and that it was happening the next day.

I met with our team and we created a plan for how the story would come together and when we’d publish it on our site and LinkedIn. By the way, I had this whole LinkedIn plan that was going to be interesting.

We had everything in our hands by early that afternoon and agreed to hold off publishing until ­Tuesday, Aug. 1.

Here’s the dumb thing: Earlier on Monday I received a Shingles vaccine at my doctor’s office. Yes, I am that old! Whatever. Anyway, I was scheduled to do the majority of the reporting about the merger, but instead I had a severe reaction to the vaccine and missed the whole thing.

While all of Tuesday’s big news was going down, I was hallucinating in bed with a fever. No reporting. No LinkedIn plan. It’s funny, now.

Thank God for Peter Strozniak taking over the reporting and Natasha Chilingerian for running the editorial show in the background while I was having conversations with my closet about working at a factory. True story.

How It’s Playing Out

During the murmuring weeks, we had a number of theories of what the news might be. The obvious one was the merger or that leadership was changing. Or that CUNA finally hired a chief advocacy officer. Remember that story?

Anyway, it seems like the initial rollout of the news has been positively received by the credit union industry at large.

Yes, there have been some negative reactions. But those reactions have been few and a majority have been off-the-record, so we haven’t published those off-the-record comments.

“Singular voice, one strong brand, great move!” one person commented on LinkedIn.

Another credit union executive wrote, “Overall, I believe the merger of NAFCU and CUNA is a positive development for the credit union industry. I am excited to see how the merged organization evolves and how it benefits credit unions.”

A commenter said, “Working towards collective economies of scale is absolutely required for credit unions – even the largest require and will benefit from conferred scale as we modernize the credit union value proposition.”

One credit union CEO commented, “Mergers are a part of our industry and none of us are immune. CUNA 2.0 with ‘only’ more scale would be a huge negative for our industry. NAFCU’s bold, innovated, personal touch, and support of midsized to smaller CUs inserted as the lead post conversion along with CUNA’s scale would be outstanding for our industry – we will see and time will tell!”

And another credit union CEO posted, “This is beautiful. I do think it can become the ‘best of both.’ The new brand identity is also extremely welcome: America’s Credit Unions!”

I thought the word “beautiful” was an odd choice, but to each his own.

This new America’s Credit Unions name brings up some potentially tricky issues for other organizations. Take a look at the $398 million America’s Credit Union in Garland, Texas, for example. How will America’s Credit Unions impact their credit union brand? Then there’s America’s Credit Union in DuPont, Wash., and America’s Credit Union Museum in Manchester, N.H. I’d have to think these other America’s Credit Union places are going to see some messed up Search Engine Optimization numbers starting next year.

The other thing we’ve wondered in the newsroom is, “Why not just keep CUNA or NAFCU? Why change the name?”

When you look at branding value and marketing oomph, both names are fully known throughout the credit union universe. But starting fresh with a new name and logo and branding and business cards (are we still doing business cards?), that’s not only a lot of work but it’s incredibly expensive. And don’t forget the work that has to be done to make sure Google properly knows what America’s Credit Unions is.

I’ve been through jobs where we’ve only updated our logo and that took months of work and millions of dollars to work with advertising, consulting and design firms. I’m sure many of you have been at places where your logo has changed or even your credit union name has changed. And then you get a pile of all new work swag in the form of water bottles, pens, shirts and travel mugs.

The words/acronyms NAFCU and CUNA disappearing from our credit union vocabulary is an odd thing to think about. CUNA Mutual Group got rid of its CUNA reference earlier this year and is now TruStage.

But losing these two names will mean something new has arrived for all of us.

As NAFCU President/CEO Dan Berger wrote in an Aug. 4 blog post characterizing the shift into America’s Credit Unions, “It will transform credit union representation.”

I have no doubt about that. Change can be fun. Change is pretty exciting.

Berger put it well when he ended his blog post with, “Things will change – but for the best.”

OK then, we’ll all be watching to see how this change plays out.

Michael Ogden Editor-in-Chief mogden@cutimes.com