To: SECU Board of Directors
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| Nothing "formal" of course... |
Dear Chairman Ayers,
Your inept hedging on the issue of SECU proposals to merge with Local Government FCU (LGFCU) will soon come home to roost to the detriment of you and the entire SECU Board - and of course to SECU's reputaion for forthrightness. Your "delicate" wording almost implies that no proposal was made, which as you and the entire SECU Board know, is not true.
LGFCU's Annual Membership Meeting is to be held on Friday, March 24, 2023 at 12:30 pm in the Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley. You and the SECU Board have forced LGFCU into a difficult box with your "informal" proposals last year to merge. With your "offer", SECU moved from being a trusted partner to a wolf-in-sheep's clothing predator to the good folks at LGFCU. You're kinda the new Brando, the new "Godfather" at SECU - "make 'em an ["informal"] offer they can't refuse".
And, having failed with the "informal" in-your-face merger proposal, it appears you are now slinking around the State Legislature seeking approval for "anybody can join" authority . Why that would mean in the future all LGFCU members could be eligible to join SECU! How coincidental! How cynical.
The dilemma for the Board at LGFCU is the loss of access to SECU branches - a deterioration in service which most of LGFCU's 400,000 members don't like and certainly don't want. LGFCU has told its' members "no branch service in the future". Instead, LGFCU will convert over to its' CIVIC FCU platform in 2024. Most folks are pretty sure that approach won't work - and certainly will fail, if SECU receives statutory approval from the Legislature to allow anybody and everybody to join.
LGFCU has tried for 5 years to develop CIVIC FCU into an all-digital credit union - it hasn't worked. Since CIVIC FCU was chartered in 2017, the credit union has barely reached $100 million in assets and now has less than 5,000 members - that's after 5+ years of operation. As a comparison, over the same 5 year period, LGFCU has added 80,000 members and increased assets by almost $2 billion to $3.9 billion. LGFCU is definitely between a rock and a hard place - and so are its' 400,000 members!
Reckless leadership always has consequences... in this case for hundreds of thousands of North Carolina county and municipal employees.
Guess..."If you can't join 'em , beat 'em" [up] - right? "Informally", of course...
Dear Chairman Ayers,
