As the person interviewed for your online story of March 23 (“Symitar Eyeing CUs Unwilling to Recapitalize”), I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify the intent and context of my comments. As a former journalist, I fully understand the challenge of distilling a conversation that took 20 minutes down into a few sentences. In this case, I can see where my comments, taken out of the context of the full conversation, might be misconstrued.

Symitar has supported the credit union movement for more than 25 years. We are very proud to have a number of corporate credit unions as our customers and believe that the corporate network is both viable and essential to the future of the industry. We value our relationships with corporate credit unions every bit as much as we value our relationships with our natural person credit union clients.

The central question posed by the reporter was simple enough: If an existing Symitar client approaches us intent on displacing its current vendor-in this case, a corporate credit union-for whatever product and whatever reason, do we have solutions to offer? I answered truthfully that Symitar does offer some of the same products and services as corporate credit unions and that, of course, we would provide them to any client who wants them.

However, I also stressed that this is not what Symitar wants to happen, that we have no interest in actively endeavoring to take business away from corporate credit unions and that we recognize the importance of the corporate credit union network. I only stated, in essence, that we're here if our clients need us-no matter why they need us.

I think it's also important to note that the overlap between our product line and that of the typical corporate credit union is minimal. Yes, we offer some of the same products and services. But in total, corporate credit unions are able to offer many things that a technology company like ours simply cannot-products and services that have absolutely nothing to do with Symitar's core competencies.

To any corporate credit union that may have been offended by this article, I offer my sincerest personal apology. Please trust that my intent was exactly as I have stated it here.

John San Filippo
Marketing Manager
Symitar
San Diego