The landscape of the province’s financial system takes on a new look this month with the formal creation of the largest credit union.
Members of Regina-based Conexus, Synergy in Lloydminster and Yorkton’s Cornerstone credit unions voted to merge their organizations last year but it took until January 1st for the legal process to get fully rolling.
The new entity will be called Conexus and will become the 800-pound gorilla of the CU system in Saskatchewan, accounting for more than 40-percent of system’s assets in the province. Saskatoon-based Affinity is now the second largest, representing about a quarter of the system’s assets. It was roughly the same size as Conexus prior to the merger.
The new Conexus will represent about 12-percent of the overall financial assets in Saskatchewan when you include the chartered banks and Innovation Credit Union which is the only federally chartered CU.
This is the latest in a decades long system realignment as locally-based credit unions joined forces to afford more sophisticated technology and fund larger transactions as local businesses often outgrew the capacity of smaller credit unions.
