CO-OP Financial Services will award a shareholder dividend of $26.1 million for fiscal year 2016, raising its total patronage amount to $393.7 million since dividends 1996 when CO-OP first became a cooperative.
The monies are set to be paid out to CO-OP's 1,200 shareholder institutions over a period of time. The cooperative serves about 3,500 credit union clients total, some of which are shareholders.
“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 President and CEO Todd Clark said in a statement. “We are particularly pleased to return such a large patronage to shareholders on the heels of our
CO-OP also highlighted a number of other recent activities:
*The company is working to implement artificial intelligence to fight fraud, with a machine learning-based risk management tool to be used by CO-OP for its client credit unions in 2017.
*CO-OP and FCTI Inc. (an ATM network and ATM service provider) have reached an agreement ensuring that approximately 8,000 ATMs located in 7-Eleven stores nationwide will continue to be a part of the CO-OP ATM network. The agreement also guarantees that CO-OP ATM, at 30,000 machines nationwide, remains the largest credit union-owned network in the industry.
*CO-OP has formed a strategic partnership with Early Warning (a payment and risk solutions company) to offer credit unions access to the Zelle Network, which will enable members of participating credit unions to send money to anyone with a U.S. bank or credit union account.
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