Grand Rapids, MI (November 10, 2021) – NACUSO President, Jack Antonini, announced that NACUSO has formed a wholly owned subsidiary NACUSO Business Services, Inc. (“NBS”). Guy Messick has been named CEO of NBS.

One of the principal values of NACUSO is providing networking opportunities, the ability for credit unions to connect with innovators, and entrepreneurs to discover or create new opportunities and service solutions. This has mainly occurred at NACUSO’s Networking Conference. The NACUSO Board recognized a need to create connection resources between Conferences and formed NBS for that purpose.

NBS, with the assistance of CU Answers, has created a website that enables credit unions to discover opportunities and solutions. NBS has developed two initiatives. The first is the NACUSO Marketplace. The NACUSO Marketplace is a digital platform that enables NACUSO Members that provide services to credit unions to post information about their services and value proposition. Given the amount of information that a Member can post, the listings are more akin to a virtual sales booth. Credit unions can access the Marketplace to begin their due diligence process of identifying and evaluating their service provider options.

The NACUSO Marketplace is a collaboration, and every successful collaboration must have benefits for the parties. The benefits and value proposition to credit unions and the NACUSO Member service providers are as follows:

For credit unions:

• No cost to access.
• The only digital platform that could ultimately have hundreds of service provider options for credit unions to survey.
• The information posted can be quite extensive and enable a credit union to evaluate whether a service provider might be a good fit.
• Ability to search by very specific services.
• No service provider is excluded due to an exclusive endorsement relationship or other reason.
• Can elect to limit their service provider choices to CUSOs.
• Can discover CUSO investment opportunities.
• Credit unions that are NACUSO Members will receive discounts from Members that offer them.

To NACUSO Members listing in the Marketplace:

• No cost to list.
• Full control of their virtual booth and its content.
• Being on the only digital platform that is widely viewed by credit union decision-makers searching for service solutions and available 24 x 365.
• Ability to provide text and links to fully explain their services and value proposition, e.g., links to demos, testimonials, and presentations.
• Ability to be specific in their service offerings.
• CUSOs have the ability to inform credit unions of CUSO investment opportunities.
• Obtain reports of views of their virtual booth.

The second initiative is the NBS Promotion Partners. Sometimes an idea is so compelling, the traditional speed of credit union awareness and adoption should be accelerated. NBS will actively assist the Promotion Partners with communicating their value proposition to credit unions and CUSOs. The Promotion Partners will be a select number of newer CUSOs that offer significant benefits to credit unions and CUSOs by leveraging an innovative and/or collaborative business model. The first NBS Promotion Partner is CU Capital Management, LLC (“CUCM”), www.cucapitalmanagement.com. Mitchell Amsler is the CEO.

CUCM is a CUSO that developed a Sale/Leaseback Network. Credit unions that own an office building, operational center, and/or branch network which has appreciated in value have the opportunity to sell their real estate and lease it back, which provides an immediate increase in the credit union’s capital without disturbing the operations of the credit union. The innovation of CUCM’s Network is to create CUSOs to purchase and lease back the real estate to the selling credit union, thus keeping the profits of the transactions within the credit union industry. There are also lending opportunities. The CUSOs that buy the real estate will use debt to partially fund the real estate purchases.

There is a lot of capital locked up in credit union owned real property, capital that credit unions can use now and in anticipation of increases in regulatory capital requirements. As for the investors, no one should guarantee investment returns but the fact that CUCM will not take a management fee unless the credit union investors realize an average net annual return of 5% on their investment, shows the confidence of CUCM in the business model. As for the lenders, a loan that relies upon lease payments from well-capitalized credit unions is a very prudent lending opportunity.

Visit www.nacusobiz.com to learn more about NBS.

About NACUSO Business Services, Inc.

NACUSO Business Services, Inc. (NBS) is a for-profit wholly-owned subsidiary of NACUSO formed in 2020. The role of NBS is to support the mission of NACUSO by connecting credit unions and CUSOs with opportunities and service solutions. NBS also develops revenue streams that provides additional resources to NACUSO to support NACUSO’s mission.

About NACUSO

NACUSO (National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations) was formed in 1985 to help credit unions explore the use of CUSOs and the delivery of non-traditional products and services. Over the years, NACUSO’s focus has evolved to educating credit unions on the benefits of collaboration, helping credit unions find innovative collaborative partners & solutions, helping CUs form multi-owned CUSOs that help credit unions achieve economies of scale, risk reduction and obtain expertise, as well as being the collaboration focused regulatory & legislative advocate for CUSOs and their credit union owners.