ANGWIN, Calif. — Silverado Credit Union has become the sixth member of a consortium of small Northern California credit unions who banded together to jointly afford online banking and lending tools.

“Aside from saving money and delivering more e-services to members, we get to be a credit union again and not the data processing enterprise we were becoming,” said Marilyn Van Dolson, president of $42 million Silverado CU, the newest member of Credit Union Shared Resources LLC.

“We also get more control and safety, with direct access to our data, redundant backups, sophisticated firewalls and lending engines, and regular testing we could not have afforded on our own,” she said.

The Napa County CU expects to complete testing and migration to the CUSR servers and software–redundantly housed in Stockton and Modesto–by the end of March.

The consortium said it could accommodate more credit unions, as long as they run on a Symitar core platform.

“With our current configuration, we could add another 20 like-sized credit unions,” said Frank Michael, CEO of Allied CU in Stockton.

The member credit unions, which average about $50 million in assets, also include Community First CU in Santa Rosa, First Federal CU and Community Trust CU in Modesto, and Tracy FCU in Tracy.