ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA told corporate credit unions today it will continue to keep the ACH APEX processing at U.S. Central FCU going until December 31, but plans to raise prices for the processing by 80% July 1 in order to encourage corporates to find new ACH providers by then.
“NCUA remains committed to minimizing disruption of services to credit unions and their members,” said Scott Hunt, director of NCUA’s Office of Corporate CUs, in a letter dated today. “At the same time, it must balance the costs to the Corporate Stabilization Fund. Maintaining the U.S. Central Bridge operations increases costs borne by the CSF, and in turn to all federally insured credit unions.”
NCUA will be monitoring each corporate’s plans to transition away from the U.S. Central APEX platform and will be requiring each corporate to develop a plan and timeline for their transition. The plan must be submitted to the NCUA Corporate office by Feb. 24.
The plans should include due diligence over the ACH vendor process, informing members how the transition will impact their operations and service to members, identification of implementation steps, and member education on new interfaces and processes, said Hunt, who noted that both NCUA and the Federal Reserve will make personnel available to help in the transition.
The ACH processing operations are the only substantive business remaining at U.S. Central after NCUA awarded the electronic bill payment services for the one-time $52 billion corporate to CO-OP Financial Services.
U.S. Central is one of the three failed corporates being liquidated by NCUA, the others being WesCorp FCU and Constitution Corporate FCU. The other two corporate failures, Members United Corporate FCU and Southwest Corporate FCU, are being revived as new entities, Members United as Alloya Corporate and Southwest Corporate as Catalyst Corporate.
