PHILADELPHIA-Rohm and Haas Employees CU plans to be aggressive as 900 of the affected workers at its primary sponsor are losing their jobs.
CEO John Dewaele said the single sponsor institution is "disproportionately affected" by layoffs and overall manufacturing sector weakness. But Rohm and Haas Employees CU has some experience in dealing with layoffs as its sponsor has undergone some transformation over the years. "As the world economy has changed the company has changed to survive in it," he said, noting the firm has laid off a number of workers in the past half-decade despite avoiding job cuts altogether during the Great Depression. "Rohm and Haas has been a great company - it's been in business for 100 years."
The credit union has seen its membership, which stands around 4,000, remain static for the past 20-30 years, giving the institution plenty of time to get to know its members on a personal level. Dewaele said staff plans to be proactive when it becomes clear exactly who will lose their jobs and contact them to try and avoid delinquencies. "We try to work with members who have lost their jobs, giving them extension agreements to try and ease it for them, but we inevitably take some losses from it," he added.
RECU also plans to reach out to its membership on an "as-needed individual basis," but Marlowe said the institution is more than ready to work on broader payment plans, loan restructuring and pursuing other avenues to alleviate the pain. Plans are also being put in place to head off delinquencies and the possibility of charge-offs and loan defaults by opening up the lines of communication between members and staffers even more. Even if some red ink splashes on the books, Marlowe is confident that the credit union can withstand the impact. "RECU is one of the strongest institutions you will find," he said. "We have 2.5 times more capital than required by regulators, so we're ready to weather the storm."
Dewaele is more uncertain about the future of the credit union's sponsor, as a deal to purchase the firm by Dow Chemical Company is very much up in the air, than he is about the CU itself. The $32 million credit union lost money last year and Dewaele expects to lose more this year, but "it's really just a drop compared to our reserves," which were built up considerably during the 1980s and 90s. Rohm and Haas Employees CU has about $18.7 million in short-term deposits while it has lent out only $8.5 million.
