The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Credit union sets sights on growth
Not just for school employees anymore
A local credit union hopes to grow its membership base while staying firmly rooted in Lorain County education.
The School Employees Lorain County Credit Union Inc., 340 Griswold Road in Elyria, is celebrating its 60th year in business in 2017.
For years the credit union drew its members from the school districts of Lorain County.
Now it has opened its membership to anyone who lives, works, worships or attends school in Lorain, Cuyahoga, Medina or Erie counties.
“We wanted to get into that market to help expand the credit union,” said Chief Executive Officer Neil Sommers, a Lorain native.
Local history
The credit union has an established record of financial service in Lorain County, according to the credit union staff and the company’s official history.
It started in 1958 with a group of teachers from Midview High School near Grafton.
Teacher John Bartter had $20 with him — the amount needed to pay for a charter. He ended up becoming the
credit union’s first treasurer.
After just seven months, the credit union grew and opened its membership to other Lorain County schools.
Now retired, Bartter remains an adviser to the credit union, usually over lunch with Sommers, he said.
The institution also had several key changes in the last few years.
Merging, growing
In 2014, the School Employees credit union merged with the Lorain School Employees Credit Union. For years the county credit union and Lorain credit union were rivals, with a gentleman’s agreement that one would serve members from the county school districts and the other would serve Lorain’s teachers and their families.
Sommers became the CEO of the merged credit union, which continues to operate the Lorain credit union as its branch at 4459 Oberlin Ave.
After the merger, the credit union had more than 12,000 members and assets of about $155 million. Its membership came from the educators and students of Lorain County.
In October 2016, the credit union’s management team contemplated opening membership, so the credit union obtained the community charter.
When the credit unions merged, the organization’s average membership age was 60 years old and many new teachers already had established banking relationships, Sommers said.
“How do you get that to grow when there’s not an influx of a lot of new teachers?” Sommers said.
“We needed to look and say, how we can diversify our membership and make it continue to grow the credit union?” he said. “In order to do that the board felt the best policy was to become a community charter so that puts us out there in the same level field as the other community chartered credit unions.”
Focus on service
All of Lorain County’s credit unions relatively are small compared to the largest banks of the nation and region, the staff members said.
They have government regulations like banks, but the credit unions do not have public shareholders. Instead, the members are the owners of the credit unions, so staff can focus on customer service.
“It’s people helping people – there aren’t stockholders,” Grossestreuer said.
“That’s the philosophy,” Sommers said.
“That’s the core of a credit union,” Grossestreuer said.
Still in school
Even with a community charter, the credit union will not abandon its heritage dealing with Lorain County schools and the community.
A Lorain High School alumnus, Sommers studied at Lorain County Community College before serving in the Air Force. He has coached soccer and has served on the boards of the Lorain Port Authority and Lorain Sports Hall of Fame.
In Lorain County schools, Grossestreuer has taught Lifeopoly, a game that introduces sixth- to eighth-grade students to the concept of living with a budget determined by a job salary.
In the exercise, the students must pay for housing, clothing and food, and then deal with “life unexpecteds,” such as another child added to the family.
Once that’s finished, the students learn how to balance their checkbooks. The results can be a surprise, Grossestreuer said.
“Nine times out of 10 it’s pretty shocking for them, that they didn’t budget correctly,” she said. The students sometimes say, “I don’t want to grow up, or, I’m just going to have my mom pay for it, or, I don’t want to be an adult. We get that a lot, so it’s a lot of fun.”