Last week, three multi-owned cooperative CUSOs – Michigan-based Xtend, Inc., Washington-based CU*Northwest, Inc. and Michigan-based CU*Answers, Inc. – helped facilitate a strategic planning session with a group of southern California clients and prospects.  The event, which was organized to help foster intra-network collaboration using both credit union and CUSO resources, was hosted by South Bay Credit Union at their Redondo Beach, California headquarters.    

Scott Collins, Xtend President commented, “I have had the pleasure of participating in several similar meetings in this past year, and I left this meeting with the feeling that this group is truly vested in each other’s success.  Even though our CUSO provides shared human resources to every partner in the room, the goal going into the meeting was to inspire them to provide these same services for each other in order to fully leverage the collective skill sets that existed within the credit unions. Not only would that foster best practices and a built-in business resiliency, it would also allow them to deploy services quicker and at a reduced cost.”

Collins believes that this new solution will be a catalyst for resource sharing in the region.  “These credit unions already share a network that includes data processing and a slew of front and back office services,” says Collins.  “Our three CUSOs brought the templates and tools to the table that have been successful at a national level.  It will be exciting to watch this regionally-focused peer group put them to work in their local marketplace.”