Four reasons for RVA Financial’s rapid turnaround
How will the board keep the CEO who guided the recovery for the long term?
For decades, the credit union born in the basement of the Richmond, Virginia, city hall in 1950 grew from its base of municipal workers by adding hospital, food industry and other employee groups. In 2007 it rebranded as New Generations Federal Credit Union. In 2014, it gained a community charter, striving to move up the financial services food chain.
But that just wasn’t happening.
At the end of 2016, the $61 million credit union’s net income was minus $650,000—the eighth time in the last nine years that it had finished in the red. The board of directors responded with a nationwide search for a CEO with experience in turning around troubled credit unions.
As a result of the search, the credit union gave Rick Preble, 46, his first CEO job. He’d held executive positions at three other credit unions, including $1 billion and $3 billion organizations.
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