The members of the Spectra Credit Union have thrown their support behind a proposed partnership with the Affinity Credit Union and Advantage Credit Union.
Spectra held its annual general meeting Monday night at its Estevan headquarters. Following the AGM, a special meeting was held to cast the final vote on the much talked about arrangement between the three credit unions. After watching the membership of Affinity (97 per cent in favour) and Advantage (93 per cent in favour) vote for the partnership, over 300 Spectra members followed suit as 94 per cent of them voted yes, while 96 per cent of investment shareholders said yes.
The vote clears the path for what will become a massive operation with 76 branch locations throughout the province and almost 1,000 employees.
Speaking after the vote, Spectra CEO Tim Schroh said he was confident members would vote in favour of the partnership but was pleased to see such overwhelming support.
"It's a real strong support of the board's vision, direction and their decision as well as management's so I am really pleased," he said. "I think everybody sees the value proposition in it, especially around the member service, the access, the stronger capital base of a larger credit union, the slightly larger size and scale but still maintaining grassroots co-op principles, that's what is really important."
Mark Lane, the CEO of Affinity Credit Union, was in Estevan for Monday's vote and said there is a sense of relief now that all three memberships have said yes. Like Schroh, Lane said he was pleased to see the support.
"It means more, I think, to the members and to the board of each of the credit unions that were involved," he said. "The other night in Saskatoon, we had a modern day record, we had about 650 people out to the Affinity vote and I think Advantage had somewhere in the 300 neighbourhood, too. Strong membership representation means a lot to the board and to have a strong turnout of membership in support means a lot to them."
Asked what attracted Affinity to the partnership with Spectra and Advantage, Lane noted that they have significant experience in such moves, having added over 20 different credit unions to their operation in the last decade alone.
"We were also very interested in the region served by Spectra Credit Union and the Melfort and Prince Albert regions (which Advantage operates in). Members are more and more mobile and we know that we have a lot of members that work in the oilpatch in southeast Saskatchewan.
"We relished the opportunity. The southeast corner of the province offered us diversification because we don't have a significant oil and gas presence in our book today. We had an opportunity to diversify our portfolio and certainly the growth of this region was attractive to us in terms of bringing more members to our credit union."
The three institutions will operate under the Affinity name when they officially become one operation on July 1. But before that can take place, Schroh said there is a great deal of work that must be completed first.
"There's a bunch of regulatory filings that we have to do," he said. "We are still three autonomous credit unions up until July 1, so we have to carry on business somewhat as usual."
Once the deal is official, Schroh said they will do what they can to make the transition seamless for members.
"Going forward they won't notice the difference so much, but being larger in size, scale and scope gets us closer to providing a lot of those online, mobile-type payments, a lot of electronic, technological-type products and services that we are planning to implement, it gets us closer to implementing those quicker so they are going to get that quicker than what we can do as a stand-alone small to medium sized credit union."
During the presentation prior to the vote, Schroh said members will also benefit from having branches throughout much of the province and that being part of a larger operation will allow them to handle larger commercial requests.
