ARLINGTON, Va. — Automation and the capacity to perform shared branching transactions without actually standing in front of a credit union teller was the top shared branching story of 2007.

Generally credit union shared branching has continued to grow. The strength of the service as a method of disaster preparation and mitigation that really came to the forefront on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita also helped CUs serve their members in other disasters this year. This has led to more credit unions building shared branching participation into their disaster planning.

In addition, CO-OP Financial Services Shared Branching reported that its Next Generation Switch was fully up and running across the network. This first-ever credit union-owned data switch lets CO-OP Shared Branching tellers see a much wider field of information on members' credit union accounts and facilitates greater service and fraud prevention, CO-OP says.