✅ Baseline. Prior to September, 2021, SECU had an uninterrupted 85-year record of growth in assets and membership, un-besmirched by sanction or scandal.
✅ Timeline. 🔺September, 2021 - "New/New" arrives at SECU. 🔺2022 - Chaos Ensues. 🔺October, 2022 - Annual meeting resolution🔺November/December, 2022 - Fireside Chats
🔆 Here was the question asked in the Annual Meeting resolution about the issue of merging with Local Government Federal Credit Union:
"2) Proposal to Merge Local Government FCU – SECU made an unsolicited offer to merge with Local Government Federal Credit Union. It is not clear why."
Here is the Fireside Chat video response provided by SECU Board Chairman Chris Ayers to the membership of SECU [you can find it here: - link: Fireside Chat Highlights at SECU website]
🔆 Chairman Ayers: "SECU never made a formal proposal to merge with Local Government Credit Union."
A Question of Trust...
Mr. Ayers,
Ever since you made that statement to the entire SECU membership - which the video indisputably documents - I have had difficulty believing anything you say - and here's why.
As mentioned in a prior post (6/24 - Part 2); during 2022, I began "receiving calls" from SECU staff, members, and former credit union colleagues expressing concerns about the new culture, new direction at SECU. Retired, my involvement with SECU was long past. I did not solicit, nor encourage the calls.
Quite a few of those calls - starting early in 2022 - were concerns about a proposed merger between SECU and LGFCU. Many of those calls came from a wide variety of folks involved with LGFCU. Having worked with LGFCU for decades, I know well many of LGFCU staff, leaders, and Board members - both active and retired. Mr. Ayers, that proposal to merge was made by the leadership of SECU with your full knowledge and under your direction as Chair of the SECU Board of Directors.
The proposal included substantial discussions of the fate of LGFCU staff, rebranding of SECU/CIVIC, the clear "threat" of SECU open membership to LGFCU's future, and tactics to sway the decision by the LGFCU Board. Those discussions went on from January 2022 through the early summer of 2022, until the LGFCU Board rejected merger outright. Mr. Ayers, you were directly and intimately involved with the merger proposal over this entire period.
For the record, I hope in this era of never-vanishing emails, universal digital surveillance and tracking, screenshots, and the power of cellphones to record and photograph; that you understand I'm not "guessing" about the facts in this matter. Do you want me to mention the date, time, place of conversations and meetings? How about some prompts like Taverna Agora, City Club, The Capital Grille - what was on the menu, who ordered what. Or, how about the almost unending, statewide string of emails and direct calls during this period from LGFCU EVP Dwayne Naylor (now LGFCU CEO), complaining about the coercion and intimidation being applied to LGFCU?
There are numerous, highly credible folks who have been directly and indirectly caught up with the fallout from the SECU merger proposal, who will come forward to testify as to what actually occurred. No one - including me - wants to be involved with the mess you have created at SECU and LGFCU - but they will if necessary. You are accountable for your actions.
Under any measure of fairness, Mr. Ayers you did not tell the truth to 2.7 million SECU members about the merger proposal made to LGFCU. Your statement was a blatant, intentional attempt to mislead. Hope these statements are succinct and not too subtle.
Look forward to your public response - whether formal or informal - to the 2.7 million North Carolinians who have in the past put their trust in SECU.
That is one thing which you should not have "changed".
... looks like it is time to play: "Truth or Consequences?"
