LAS VEGAS – The market is ripe for innovative CUSOs and executives from three fledgling firms described their ventures while also appealing for credit union support during a well-attended panel session at the annual NACUSO conference here.
The CUSO projects, all in their infancy, ranged from a payroll processing service in North Carolina to a dedicated disaster recovery facility for CUs in Hagerstown, Md.
Also in the group was an appeal for investor signups and CU participation in a California-based repo remarketing CUSO.
Recommended For You
Panel participants included:
* Kirk Drake, president and CEO of Ongoing Operations ILC, the Rockville, Md. CUSO linked to NIH FCU, which has leased the disaster recovery facility for emergency or special need CU tech services.
* E. Ray Crouse, chairman of Cooperative Payroll Solutions in Winston Salem, N.C. and a managing director of Allegacy Services ILC, a CUSO that has already been marketing a payroll service business in conjunction with the North Carolina Credit Union League. Allegacy Services is owned by Allegacy FCU.
* Robert Wagner, director of remarketing for CARS Remarketing Inc. of San Clemente, Calif. who announced he was soliciting for investors for the CUSO, Cars CUSO ILC, which he described as a "first ever CUSO dedicated to providing the co-op benefits of remarketing exclusively for credit unions."
Wagner, the son of a car dealer and with experience in bank auto lending, said CUs, now a major force in the repo field, are faring badly in remarketing because most small CUs and even larger ones know little about pricing and recovery.
"They dabble" in the field, he said, and are losing large sums, a fact that could be redeemed through the California CUSO. "At the moment it is all swing and miss for credit unions," he said.
Credit unions, he said, engage in too much guesswork on repo recoveries handing off the job to inexperienced staffers when a CUSO like his relying on new technology and the Web can bring substantial savings.
Drake of NIH said the Hagerstown recovery facility has more than 32,000 square-feet of space with more than 125 cubicles. So far Ongoing Operations has nine participating CUs and 10 investors.
Crouse said the market for payroll services is growing rapidly with Allegacy's 500 SEGs a prime market. It's also an area banks don't seem to want and thus CUs from across the South and elsewhere are showing interest in a branded program. Allegacy FCU began a successful test of the service earlier this year before reaching out to a broader market, said Crouse. [email protected]
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.