CU*SOUTH announced that Northwest Arkansas FCU has joined the CUSO network.

“Credit unions today must be able to compete with the big banks by offering products and services that enable broader access to a diverse selection of member services,” said Becky Whitted, CEO of Northwest Arkansas FCU. “Our partnership with CU*SOUTH allows our credit union to expand our reach by offering more services such as cloud-based online account opening, remote loan closing, text banking – and still decrease overall cost compared to the in-house core software we use today.”

“We are so excited to be part of the CU*SOUTH family,” noted Ms. Whitted. “We chose CU*SOUTH not only because of their products and services, but because we wanted a partner who truly believes in the credit union philosophy of “people helping people.” Being a part of a credit union service organization gives our credit union monetary advantages not only in overall core processing services, but also by leveraging the buying power of a network of over 270 credit unions sharing resources, building network partnerships, and collectively contracting other vendors. The industry leading toolsets and resources CU*SOUTH provides will now allow us to streamline and automate time consuming and expensive tasks. Northwest Arkansas FCU can now focus more on our members and less on performing time-consuming procedures that our old software required every day.”

“Thanks to our close cooperation with our credit union partners and owners, CU*SOUTH was able to offer Northwest Arkansas FCU a complete, cloud-based, integrated solution that includes both core and much more – everything the credit union needs to gain memberships and loans in a rapidly-evolving market,” said CU*SOUTH Manager, CUSO Development, Trevor Hamilton. “Our mission is to empower our credit unions to grow; as a CUSO, we can do this through a collaborative pricing model that does away with the per-module costs that non-CUSO vendors inflict on credit unions. With CU*SOUTH, credit unions can add new product and services without having to take the risk of budgeting an up-front cost for a new component – it’s already in our standard offering,” Mr. Hamilton continued.

“We’ve integrated every element of the credit union operation into a single cloud-based platform – CU*BASE^® – so there’s no worries about interfacing Product A with Product B – the data flows through a single system – from home banking to back office. Finally, to make sure that all credit unions, large and small, get the maximum benefit from our solution, we built a network of support services – from call center to back office and compliance – so credit unions can leverage our experience as well as our software tools”, said Derrick Smith, COO of CU*SOUTH.

Whitted added that the credit union chose CU*SOUTH as its new core partner for its ability to help better serve members and expand membership. “We utilized our current core for 10+ years and was unable to offer everything we will with CU*SOUTH. We look forward to providing our members with new and updated services.”

“After partnering with the same core processing company for many years, making the decision to change did not come lightly,” Becky continued. “Once we completed our due diligence, it became clear that CU*SOUTH could provide the services we need at Northwest Arkansas Federal Credit Union, offering a competitive value proposition, all within a business model that made sense to us. We came into the due diligence process understanding that change is change, and that we would keep our members’ and employees’ satisfaction at the top of the ‘must have’ list. We were impressed with the system, and how intuitive the it was, when we visited a CU*SOUTH client to see it in a live environment.”

“CU*BASE was clearly designed with the end-user in mind! In addition, the message that we received from our peers, during our site visit, was that the conversion was smooth for staff and that their members adapted quickly. What capped off our decision to make the change is the confidence that we have with CU*SOUTH’s leadership, their staff knowledge base, their ancillary support services, and the CUSO governance structure. We look forward to this new partnership,” Becky concluded.

“Members come first in any core processing decision,” said Leo Vaulin, CEO of CU*SOUTH. “First, CU*SOUTH delivers the best online banking solution, which empowers members to do everything online – we have credit unions that operate with no physical branches – so the member self-service experience needs to be intuitive and fast – like Amazon or Google. Because we’re owned by credit unions, and not by banking software conglomerates, our pricing for both software and services was designed to be affordable for all credit unions – large and small. Making sure the members’ money stays in the credit union and in the community, is the best way for a credit union to show its members that their interests come first!”