One sign of that growth was the announcement in April that EPL had signed 11 credit unions in Hawaii to core processing contracts that call them to be running on EPL's i-POWER platform by July 4.

"We're excited that these credit unions have joined the EPL family. Our focus on the success of the customer, our truly open architecture and the fact that we are credit union-owned were major factors in their decision," said Jim Gowan, EPL's executive vice president of sales.

EPL's owners are $1.7 billion Kern Schools FCU of Bakersfield, Calif.; $1 billion Georgia Telco CU of Atlanta; $360 million The Credit Union of Alabama in Tuscaloosa; $316 million Family Security CU of Decatur; Community CU of Gadsden; $176 million Mutual Savings CU of Hoover; $115 million Colorado Springs CU in Colorado; $87 million Jefferson County Teachers CU in Birmingham; $115 million Alabama Teachers CU in Gadsden; $200 million Legacy Community FCU in Birmingham; and the Alabama Credit Union League. Benson joined EPL in April 2004 after 23 years with CUNA Mutual that included stints as chief sales and marketing officer and president of CUNA Brokerage Services. Gowan joined EPL in May 2006 after 22 years at CUNA Mutual, also serving for a time as chief sales and marketing officer. "Jim and I joined this transformation effort about halfway through it," Benson says, "and we often tell each other how neat it is to be engaged with a bunch of credit union owners like this."

Five years ago, EPL's owners made the decision to redo the core platform, an effort that included a rewrite of "every line of code in our software and then moving credit unions over to that system," Benson said. "That was just completed in October of this past year.

"We had been operating in the red because of all this investment, but we're happy to see that the company has now been realigned and we're back in the black in cash flow on a monthly basis and we're very much looking forward to making money this year," he said.

EPL now has about 150 credit union clients, including CUs running its core platform as well as ancillary products on other host systems, such as shared branching.

Going forward, Gowan said the sales force will be concentrating on credit unions of $200 million and less to be served by EPL's data center in Birmingham, but adds that the i-POWER platform "is the same package for Kern Schools as it is for Medi-Credit in Hawaii, about a 1,500-member credit union." The migration project also is not completely done, and the company's technology experts also will be working to "ensure effective software development that gives them what they need to grow their technology and create the experience they want to create out in the marketplace," Benson said. "From that standpoint, it's our thought that we certainly have good technology. But what we believe will be our true differentiator will be our intimacy.

"We work very closely with our customers, engaging them in all our software-development processes. That's why we were able to accomplish here what we have, because of the partnership between the credit unions and their core processor.

"In that sense, we're a family, and it really adds to our value proposition as a company." –[email protected]