CU*SOUTH announced that it had completed the conversion of Frederiksted FCU to its CU*BASE hosted core platform. Frederiksted FCU serves members on the western end of the Caribbean Island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

“We’re thrilled to offer CU*SOUTH’s software and services to Frederiksted’s members,” said CU*SOUTH CEO Leo Vaulin. “This is our first credit union in the Caribbean, and we enjoyed meeting the members and learning about the Crucian culture and lifestyle. It’s a truly delightful island and the people are very open and generous – it’s a perfect place for credit unions to thrive!”

“CU*SOUTH replaced a PC-based core product that was limited in feature-functionality by the vendor’s pricing structure,” added Starla Honea, director of CUSO development. “Every time the credit union wanted to offer a new product or service, they were confronted with a per-module up-front cost. We were able to offer a cloud-based solution that included everything. Now Frederiksted FCU has access to the same tools as CUs many magnitudes larger.”

Business continuity and disaster recovery were critical considerations to Frederiksted’s CEO, Patrice Canton. “Moving to a cloud based solution means that if anything happens to our island in the event of a major hurricane our members will continue to have full access to their accounts at a time when they need it most.”

That ease of connectivity created great buzz with the credit union’s members. “The credit union’s old vendor offered a home banking product, but members didn’t use it because they felt the features were too primitive,” commented Jeana Dunaway, CU*SOUTH’s client service manager and education coordinator. “The first week after conversion, we had so many members coming in to learn about all the new things they could now do for themselves. They were so excited! Both the credit union staff and our CU*SOUTH support team felt great about offering these new improvements!”