REGINA — Leaders with Conexus Credit Union are enthusiastic after their members voted yes to a merger with Synergy and Cornerstone Credit Unions.
“As board chair and as a board, we are very excited and very proud of how our members engaged in this process and voted,” said Ken Kosolofski, board chair of Conexus Credit Union.
Results were announced June 18 and each credit union easily surpassed the 75 per cent threshold needed. The results saw 87.5 per cent Conexus members voting yes, 86.5 per cent from Cornerstone and 88.7 per cent from Synergy. Just under 20,000 members voted from all three credit unions out of a possible 200,000 members. Still, the leaders of Conexus feel this is a mandate to move ahead.
“We did get overwhelming support and there's a resounding mandate for us to create a strong, competitive, community-focused credit union and that would be not only for today's members, but for future members,” Kosolofski said. “So we're very, very happy today.”
“I would just say we're energized by that vote of confidence and are eager to deliver the benefits and value to our members,” said Celina Philpot, CEO of Conexus Credit Union.
“Overall, we were really impressed of how members wanted to engage in their level of understanding and knowing that this is a big decision they had to make and they were completely focused on the issue. They had really great questions and just to see that level of engagement was really inspiring for me and just demonstrated how much care our members have for their credit union.”
Philpott believes that the engagement with members made a big difference in answering questions and alleviating concerns that were raised.
She said during the outreach, one of the questions posed was: are you going to close my branch? “No. We were able to make the commitment. We are not closing branches. We've done our work. This merger does not require branch closures to make this thing work. And we don't have overlaps in our 57 branches throughout the province. There's no overlap. So, that was a commitment.
“A second one, which is critically important to our members, and just shows the level of engagement and care they have in their credit union, is the staff. We really like the staff. There's a trust there. We like our relationship. Are you committed to keeping the staff? And we said yes. We are committed to keeping the staff. For those who are engaged and want to be part of this new journey, we will work with them to find a role for them, meaningful employment, because we know how important that relationship and that trust is that our members have built with our employees.”
As for why the membership supported the merger so strongly, Kosolofski said “I think that there was a very strong business case here.”
“And then after that, we had a very comprehensive member outreach program. We answered a number of questions from our members. We had a number of news releases that went out and obviously interviews with the press, which helped us to get the message to the members. We had virtual town halls. We had a special meeting in early June to kick off the voting. We had branch visits both with the executive and also with board members. So, you know, we really went out and promoted this. The board recommended this merger to the membership and the membership was very, very good. They were very engaged in the process, asking a lot of really, really good questions. And then at the end of the day, voting and voting in favor of it. So, we're very pleased.”
Next steps
So now that the vote results are in, the three Credit Unions start the process of merging.
Kosolofski described the next steps from a board perspective.
“The next task for the boards of all three credit unions is to get together and pick a name. It's going to be the name of one of the three credit unions, Connexus, Synergy and Cornerstone. And we have an independent third-party consultant that's helping us with that. The second and probably the most important is to pick a CEO and it will be one of the CEOs from the three credit unions.”
Kosolofski said they are also putting together an integration team. “And that really is to start talking about things that we can and can do before January 1, 2026 to get us best prepared for this new credit union to start.”
Philpot said that it was important to note that “until we legally become a merged entity, we have to continue to operate as three separate organizations as we are under the oversight of the Competition Bureau. And that is kind of what is required. But we are spending that time just pre-planning, trying to understand what the work effort is going to look like in order to bring these three organizations together. So that'll be kind of what the management team will be focused on is that planning, trying to understand what that would look like and set some of those key milestone dates and work towards then looking at the implementation activities that will happen in 2026.”
As far as the members are concerned, they won't see changes in 2025. Conexus, Synergy and Cornerstone will continue to operate separately to that time.
Philpot said that even with the Jan. 1 date, “it's a legal date. So I would say there's going to be many firsts throughout 2026. And we will communicate that well in advance with members as those kind of timelines become put into place. And we have some clarity on what those activities will look like.”
“We're committed to supporting members along this whole process. So come Jan. 1, 2026, if there are changes, we're going to be communicating them, being very transparent with our members and making sure that we support them through the changes.”
As for what that integration process will look like, officials admitted they haven't had a chance to come together to understand what that integration process would look like, given that the focus up to now was on getting the merger approved.
“Our members needed to support this… if they didn't, we wouldn't exercise any more energy,” said Philpot. “So this is what's unique about a credit union compared to other financial institutions. Our members have a say in the direction that their credit union takes. So that's why we needed to make sure we created the awareness and waited to hear from our members which direction they wanted their credit union to go in.”
