Making good on a promise it announced this past spring, CO-OP Financial Services is rolling out a new logo and brand for shared branching.

The new logo carrying the words CO-OP Shared Branch will gradually replace the familiar swirl logo which has been the service's logo for years, since before the three national shared branch networks had consolidated into one.

“We aren't doing it just to change the logo,” explained Sarah Canepa Bang, president of CO-OP Shared Branching. “We're doing it while the swirl logo has served us well over the years, it hasn't been doing as well lately. It's just time for an update.”

Bang, who had been the CEO of Financial Service Centers Cooperative, the last of the three national networks to come under the CO-OP umbrella, said that she and other executives from other shared branch networks had long wanted to change the logo but had held back because the swirl had belonged to the concept of the shared branch and not to any one organization, She also noted that it's always a risk to change a long- established brand.

“There is always a chance that consumers won't understand the change and look for the new brand like they have gotten used to looking for the old,” Bang said.

To counter that possibility, she explained that CO-OP is sending materials that will allow CO-OP Shared Branch to share space side-by-side with the swirl for a number of months until the Swirl is gradually retired.

She explained that there was not much risk consumers would be disturbed by the arrival of a second logo beside the first, but a very real risk that some might be taken aback if the very familiar swirl simply disappeared overnight.

Having the two side by side should allow consumers to get to know the new logo before the swirl is quietly retired. Bang also explained that the new logo and brand would allow shared branching to capitalize on the already widespread familiarity consumers had with CO-OP Financial Services.

“CO-OP is ubiquitous,” Bang observed, “and we designed the new brand to resemble the CO-OP logo so that it clearly puts shared branching in the CO-OP family of services.”

Bang said there are signs that have to be changed on at least 2,200 ATMs in 7/11 convenience stores alone as well as on more than 5,000 credit union front doors.

CO-OP will send out those new symbols as the percentage of shared branching credit unions across the country have continued to slowly grow.