Southeast Corporate Credit Union, headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., recently provided support to a smaller local CU in the wake of a burglary.

Robbers broke into the $24 million Florida Baptist Credit Union, also headquartered in Jacksonville, over the Labor Day holiday weekend and seriously disrupted the small credit union's operations.

"The phone lines, security, and power were cut by the intruders," said Dottie Rice, the credit union's accounting manager. "The credit union building became a crime scene and we had very limited access to the building."

When Florida Baptist turned for help to SCCU, the corporate came through with emergency cash and processing ACH transactions.

"The first thing that we assisted the credit union with for several days was emergency cash orders," said Steve Wildes, member services manager for the corporate. "This enabled the credit union to get cash into the branch quickly, while at the same time keeping the amount on hand at a bare minimum since their vault was damaged."

ACH processing was next. "Southeast assisted us in gaining APEX ACH access at an alternate location and alternate IP address in order for us to process our files," Rice said. She added that the CU had learned some lessons from the burglary.

"Through this situation we realized how important it is to have emergency/disaster back-up plans in place," she said. "We need to have current telephone numbers of all vendors/representatives, and to test these plans before something happens. We feel that our downtime was minimal based on our well established and tested relationships with Southeast Corporate."