RALEIGH, N.C. – Coastal FCU, the one-time IBM employees credit union, announced this morning its long-time CEO Larry Wilson is ending a 38-year tenure and retiring from the $2 billion credit union July 1.
Wilson will be succeeded by Chuck Purvis, the credit union’s chief operating officer and a former executive with U.S. Central FCU and Carolina Corporate CU.
Wilson joined the credit union – then named IBM Raleigh Employees FCU - in 1974 as General Manager. At the time, the credit union had just three employees, $3.5 million in assets and served 3,900 local employees of IBM. Coastal has since grown to $2 billion in assets, with 400 employees and more than 190,000 members representing more than 1,200 organizations.
During his tenure, Wilson, a North Carolina native, has played a major role in the credit union movement, serving at various times on the boards of CUNA, NAFCU, CUNA Mutual, CU Direct Corp., the Federal Reserve Thrift Advisory Council and the Fannie Mae Advisory Council.
Purvis is an industry veteran with 30 years of experience. He has been part of Coastal’s management team since 2001. Wilson will continue to advise Purvis and Coastal’s board of directors through the remainder of 2012.
During his time at Coastal Wilson has led the credit union to the forefront of innovation, being among the first to introduce online banking. More recently, Coastal has been the leader in the implementation of seven-day-a-week service, capitalizing on centralized tellers and a video banking system that the credit union helped develop.
Financially speaking, 2010 and 2011 were each record years for Coastal, with nets of $16.8 million and $24.5 million, respectively, and just last month Coastal was able to pay a $1.5 million special dividend to its membership.
