Dan Kampen has resigned as president of the $40-billion U.S. Central Credit Union.
U.S. Central declined to provide a reason for the departure, but two sources said the reasons were not financial, as the corporates' corporate has reported strong earnings. Rather, sources indicated the primary issue has been ongoing operational issues, specifically problems with technology and the delivery of services to its corporate credit union members.
Kampen, 45, had been CEO since December of 1997. He had worked as an executive for U.S. Central for eight years until 1994, when he left to become CEO of Corporate One CU, Columbus, Ohio. David Dickens, 47, U.S. Central's senior vice president of asset-liability management, will serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor can be named. A search committee has been formed.
U.S. Central is currently going through a system conversion, moving from EDS to Symitar Systems. U.S. Central is Symitar's first corporate credit union client.
As first reported by The Credit Union Journal, in early April of 2004, U.S. central suffered an ACH outage that left 2,200 credit unions across the country unable to transact any ACH business for approximately 48 hours. The failure led NCUA's Office of Corporate Credit Unions to say it was "monitoring" the situation at the time. Alarmed that members would soon begin bouncing checks, natural-person CUs first turned to their respective corporates, as 25 of the 29 corporate credit unions are on U.S. Central's APEX ACH system
Since that failure, which has since been resolved, sources told The Credit Union Journal there have been a series of other technology glitches that have led many corporate credit unions to question their faith in U.S. Central. Other than issuing a statement on Kampen's departure, U.S. Central has declined comment.
Members of the search committee are Ed Fox, CEO of Mid-Atlantic Corporate FCU; Kathy Garner, CEO at Northwest Corporate CU, and Bob Siravo, CEO at WesCorp. No timetable for filling the position has been provided.
U.S. Central reported year-end 2004 earnings of $49.6 million and capital of 6.37%.
