Press
CU*SOUTH Signs Core Processing Agreement with Louisiana Central Credit Union
NEW ORLEANS, LA (March 13, 2014) — CU*SOUTH is pleased to welcome another outstanding credit union to the CU*BASE® GOLD system. With a conversion scheduled for summer 2014, CU*SOUTH and Louisiana Central Credit Union are already busy planning this exciting transition.
Located less than 10 miles from New Orleans in Harahan, a bustling suburb of the Big Easy, Louisiana Central CU serves 3,200 members with over $13M in assets.
When the credit union was established in 1943, its main goal was to provide loans to federal officers and employees. Now, Louisiana Central primarily serves low-income people and families. Several credit union employees – including CEO Eddie Tramell – are currently pursuing Certified Financial Counseling certification so as to offer credit counseling to help improve the financial well-being of members
While Louisiana Central CU’s members have always been its greatest asset, Hurricane Katrina – and the threat of subsequent storms – only reiterated the need for top-notch member service.
“Living on the Gulf, disaster recovery is at the forefront of our minds,” said Tramell. “CU*SOUTH offers a high-availability program that includes not only core, but also home banking, mobile and text banking, debit and credit card processing all easily accessible no matter where we – or our members – may find ourselves. Katrina helped us realize how critical it was to have uninterrupted member access to their funds via EFT, home banking or remote branch locations.”
In recent years, Louisiana Central CU has started shared branching with credit unions across the country, and won an award this past fall for its redesigned website. One of the most appealing aspects of CU*BASE is its marketing capabilities, something Louisiana Central’s management hopes to take advantage of, particularly in light of all of the new offerings the credit union has rolled out to provide its members better options.
“We’re happy to welcome our first New Orleans-based credit union into our CUSO network,” said CU*SOUTH CEO Leo Vaulin. “We appreciate the great work that the credit union is doing in their community, and we’re delighted to make it easy to offer leading-edge financial services to the members of Louisiana Central.”
The credit union also saw CU*SOUTH’s CUSO network as an additional conversion benefit. Grand Rapids, Mich.-based CUSO Xtend will provide Call Center services during the conversion process – helping to ease the transition as the CU changes core, home banking and EFT switch providers in a single weekend. In addition, back office conversion support and training will be provided by another CUSO partner – CU By Design, based in Portland, Ore.
With only a few months before conversion, Tramell and his team are readily anticipating the change.
“Most of all, we’re excited for piece-of-mind,” said Tramell. “With our current providers, we’ve felt like things just didn’t work together – we’re ready to be able to close the loop on all of our operations processes with the support provided by CU*SOUTH and its partners.”
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