CO-OP Financial Services is doling out a $26.1 million patronage for fiscal year 2016, bringing the Rancho Cucamonga, California-based CUSO’s lifetime payouts to $393.7 million since becoming a cooperative in 1996.
“This latest year’s healthy patronage to our 1,200 shareholding credit unions represents a balance with the more than $25 million we are investing in the company in 2017 on technology infrastructure and product innovation,” CO-OP Financial Services President and CEO Todd Clark said. “We are particularly pleased to return such a large patronage to shareholders on the heels of our acquisition earlier this month of TMG, making us a fully-integrated, comprehensive payments services company to shareholders, clients and the entire credit union movement.”
Clark is nearing the one-year mark in his role as CO-OP’s CEO, and the announcement back in May 2016 that he would move into the post from his former home at First Data is just one of several big moves CO-OP has made recently.
Earlier this month, for example, CO-OP Financial Services announced it acquired Des Moines, Iowa-based payments processor TMG in a $100 million all-cash deal and restructured its management team. CO-OP was formerly a minority owner in TMG, which serves approximately 400 credit unions and processes transactions for about six million cardholders across the U.S. and Canada. That deal brings the business to nearly $500 million in combined revenues, Clark told CU Times at the time of the announcement.
CO-OP also shifted several executive positions, including appointing a new chief operating officer, chief product and strategy officer, chief revenue officer, chief information officer and chief information security officer, among other things.
In March, CO-OP announced that about 8,000 ATMs in 7-Eleven stores across the country will stay in its ATM network thanks to a new agreement with ATM network and service provider Financial Consulting & Trading International, or FCTI. The partnership will also bring another 5,000 ATMs that are owned and operated by FCTI into the fold, according to the announcement. CO-OP has a fleet of about 30,000 ATMs, making it the largest credit union-only ATM network in the United States, according to the CUSO.
Back in October, the CUSO also announced it was joining forces with Scottsdale, Arizona-based Early Warning to join its Zelle Network. That platform allows credit union members to send money to anyone with a U.S. bank or credit union account.
CO-OP has also announced plans to introduce an artificial intelligence-based risk management tool for client credit unions battling fraud.
