Both membership and leadership at three Saskatchewan credit unions have decided they would be better together, and a merger will be taking effect January 1st for Synergy, Cornerstone, and Conexus credit union.
Over 86 per cent of members from each of the three credit unions voted in favour of the change. Voting took place online and in-branch between June 3rd and June 13th.
Conexus Board Chair Ken Kosolofski says discussions around the merger have been ongoing since last July.
“We’re doing certain things together, so we thought ‘why wouldn’t we explore whether a fuller merger of the three credit unions would actually work?’ We put together a committee consisting of senior management and some board members and sat in a room and started talking about what might happen if we were able to merge,” he explains.
He says there are four obstacles the merger would aim to mitigate: rising costs from third-party suppliers, increasing competition in the financial industry, increasing regulatory burden, and a need for significant technological investment.
“We felt, again, that it made sense that we did this together. As we went through the due diligence, and the business case approved it, that we would be better together than we were operating in separate credit unions.”
Conexus CEO Celina Philpot says members won’t see any changes for the remainder of 2025, as planning is still underway, but next year, they can expect several minor adjustments, most of which Philpot hopes will be made from the back end, making the switch easier for credit union members.
“There are tools that we can try to map certain activities so that the member doesn’t have to do work, we’re going to do it for them in the background type of thing. We’re very mindful that, although this is exciting, we want to minimize the amount of change that we’re going to put forward to our employees and our members.”
Although they aren’t definitive yet, changes could include the need for new cheques, a new app or web portal, and potentially a new account number if duplicates are found. She adds that this new credit union, which is going to be the largest in Saskatchewan, will serve over 200,000 members in 50 communities throughout the province.
“That’s pretty historic,” Philpot admits. “Credit unions have evolved since our early beginnings. We’ve been around for over 80 years. As the environment changes and consumer preferences change, we need to also change and evolve.”
