A credit union merger is often seen as a financial transaction. But for the people involved, it is something much deeper. In this episode, host Josh Rodriguez attends the Gateway Metro Federal Credit Union membership meeting, where members vote on whether to merge with West Community Credit Union. Along the way, he captures the emotions and perspectives of those experiencing the moment firsthand (including his own).
From leadership reflections to employee emotions, and a powerful full circle story from someone who lived both sides of the merger, this episode explores what is really at stake when two credit unions come together.
At its core, this is a story about people, purpose, and the belief that when it’s done right, a merger is not an ending. It’s a continuation.
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Banking on You is powered by West Community and Tigers Community Credit Union.
Transcript
Host Josh Rodriguez
I’m on my way to the first of all, I just have to tell myself I’m not using this in the show, Josh. You’re not using this actual audio in the show. You’re recording this so you can have a pretty good memory of what you’re feeling and experiencing right now.
That’s a short audio clip from a file on my computer named “Josh During Drive. Don’t use.” Yeah, I’m not kidding. I hate to make a liar of myself, but since I’ve already pretty much done that let’s just keep listening. Experiencing right now. Let’s just keep listening. It’s not about you. It’s not about your experience, but this will add to the story. ⁓ well, let’s keep going. I’m traveling to the Gateway Metro Federal Credit Union membership meeting where the membership will vote on whether or not to merge into West Community Credit Union. Pretty much the same meeting that we had four years ago? What year was that? That was 2022? No? Yes.
To give you some context, I served as president CEO of Missouri Valley Federal Credit Union for eleven years. Back at the beginning of 2023, Missouri Valley merged into West Community Credit Union, and here we are. But as a CEO and had my stories ready and my speech.
Driving that day to the Gateway Metro membership meeting had my feelings just all jumbled up. I recorded that audio to center myself to get the feels out there. In a way, it was therapeutic, but I had a job to do. This merger is a huge deal for the members of both West Community and Gateway Metro. I was there to do my best to capture and tell their story.
And I’ve walked that road and the path he’s walking on is similar to You know, there are a lot of question marks surrounding mergers in the credit union industry right now. Motives are being questioned and accusations get tossed around pretty quickly. There was a huge merger out on the West Coast that blew up recently and landed both credit unions in court. Yeah. That’s like getting a divorce before the I do’s are even spoken. Huh. As I travel this road again. Well, anyway, I needed to capture the essence of this merger to keep it from getting lost in the wave of MA activity swallowing up the credit union movement these days. I know what they’re what they’re what they’re going through, and I know. And I had to do this for me. Wait. No no no. This isn’t my story. This was Gateway Metro and West Community story.
Right? Right. Right.
I’m Josh Rodriguez, your at the moment very conflicted host, and this is episode eleven of Banking on You, powered by West Community and Tigers Community Credit Union. Thank you so much for joining us. There’s plenty of plenty of negative
Plenty of bad stories out there. This is not one of them. My story was not one of them. Missouri Valley was not one of them.
real story. Is it in a building? Is it in a charter? Is it in a name? Or is it in the lives of people?
Test test, test, test.
The Twin Oaks Community Center was bright and cheery that evening. Modern vinyl plank flooring guided me from the entry straight into the meeting room. Heavy curtains tried and failed to hold the early spring sunlight at bay. Even so, the sunbeams brightening up the room could not quite match the positivity pulsing from the Gateway Metro team.
How’s it going? Very good.
Josh Rodriguez (04:58)
There, how ya how you feelin’? Jay Light is credit union for just over a decade. Pretty good. If this is anyone’s story, it certainly is his.
Jay Lewis
We have to meet our quorum. Right, right. So if we get twenty one people here, I’ll feel really good. So I don’t know how many members from the outside we might have. Right. Actually, yeah, yeah, on Thursday they did another count of the p mail ballots. We were at nine hundred and twenty one get approves and eighty no’s. So over over a little over a thousand responses.
Josh Rodriguez
Had a really great response. No, that’s a great response.
Jay Lewis
Right. That’s yeah and some good feedback as far as you know, some of the question when I say great feedback, they’re just asking questions. They had some concerns about the financials. They had some concerns about you know what this would mean for their services. So again, it’s just people wanna know. Yeah. But at least they’re responding. So it was ⁓ good to hear
Josh Rodriguez
So for a little bit of inside baseball, there are a ton of legal hurdles to clear before the membership vote. At the end of the day, the members have the final say on whether the credit unions combine. They own the financial cooperative after all. It’s very democratic. And it should be. Democratic member control is one of our cooperative principles. It’s true democracy in action. Fifty percent plus one is all you need. Majority rules.
Jay Lewis
Several questions. We had one only one member respond to NCUAs comment section where it’s the merGER. Right, right, right, right. And his members came up numerous times, but again, he’s just asking questions or or throwing stuff out. He was concerned about being unbanked in the St. Louis City, which that’s not the intent. The intent is to try to improve banking. And he was he’s an older member, which that’s again, my mom is the same way. She’s always I don’t I want to talk to people, I don’t want to be going on that thing, you need a computer. It’s called a computer. Has a name. It’s not called thing. It’s called a computer. But you know it is what it is. Right. So
Josh Rodriguez
That’s good.
It’s funny, so I had this exact experience three years ago. As I was driving here, it hit me. I was like, wait a minute, I did this exact thing driving that was in your shoes instead of mine. And so it was just a really interesting experience. I remember feeling like No man, I gotta be honest. Sometimes the worst thing about hosting a podcast is going back and listening to all this stupid things you say. It’s not your story, Josh. This isn’t about you. Thankfully, Jay bailed me out with his ever-present humor.
Jay Lewis
I’m on the way out. I didn’t have any thoughts about it. Thought about turning in my badge. Maybe I’ll turn in my badge to do anything.
Josh Rodriguez
Keep it. Keep it from keep it for it.
Jay Lewis
Yeah. Keep it to the table first.
Josh Rodriguez
Right. And you could say, well, I’ll give you the CEO’s executive assistant. Before the meeting kicked off though, I wanted to chat with a few other Gateway team members. Still on hunt for the story. Mary Athenian. Awesome. Awesome. How are you feeling now? Excited. Excited about what?
Mary Elliott
All the change is coming. We have the ability to offer more things to members and get on that new core system.
Josh Rodriguez
Mary Elliott, Chief Development Office
Geri Peterson
I’ve been member for 33 years, but I’ve been on staff for six.
Josh Rodriguez
That’s Jerry Peterson and Community and Business Development.
Geri Peterson
Well, it’s you know, it’s kinda bittersweet, you know, you’re saying goodbye to something that’s been around for a long time and then for me to be able to be on staff and to make some contributions that way. But it’s also empowering to be able to move on to something new and hopefully be able to have that an imprint in the new place as well.
Josh Rodriguez
Sure. Yeah, come make a difference, please. Yeah. That’s what we like. That’s what we like.
Geri Peterson
Yeah. And since last year was our ninetieth year, you know, we were celebrating that and I was doing all of these great stories about our history. So I learned even more.
Josh Rodriguez
Gateway Metro has been serving the St. Louis community for almost a century. It’s quite impressive. So I kept talking, asking, looking for the nugget that would tell the merger story everyone needed to hear. My own story kept getting in the way. They’re working against us and the name is one of them.
I’ve talked with I had a good friend of mine this was years ago when I was a CEO. He’s like, You I really like what you guys are doing, but I don’t like your national leadership. Well, he was in construction. And so he said he thought union and thought right away, well it must have something to do with the labor unions who he was always fighting. Yeah. He’s a business owner. So he’s like
David Schmidt
Are you gonna bang on the table? All right. Thank everyone for coming. our agenda is fairly brief, but we certainly have enough time to answer any questions that anyone may have. We’ll take as much time to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we’re proposing what we’re going to do. as it ⁓ takes that you have a question about. So with that I’m going to call the special meeting document.
Josh Rodriguez
David Schmidt, Gateway Metro’s board chair.
David Schmidt
Mary? Yeah. We have a quorum. We did have a quorum. Twenty-two. Twenty-two. All right. That that’s the number that I wore all through high school and college. So that’s hopefully I can maybe perform better than I did at some of the games that I wore that number. For ninety years we have provided service to our members. that includes loans when they need and savings when they have the opportunity to save. And the credit union spirit is that and the members help each other. And Jay and his staff and myself and the board have been looking for an opportunity to expand the reach that we have…
Josh Rodriguez
The meeting went on with statements from both chief executives, ⁓ Jay Lewis, the one that who we heard from earlier, and Jason Peach.
Jay Lewis
I am the president CEO, former CFO of the credit union, so I thought I’d share some of the information on the financials that was mailed out to the members and they’re valid. So as you can tell, West Community Credit Union is about 400 has about loans than what we do. We have a lot of savers in our credit union.
But I think what’s most telling in this combination is while it may look great as far as the numbers, it looks even better when you look at the cultures of both credit unions that it felt more like home of Gateway Metro.
Jason Peach
When I first got here two years ago, or twenty years ago, feels like two years, we had two branches. So we were smaller than Gateway, and but through combining with other credit unions and continue to upgrade technology and and serve members, we’ve been fortunate to grow together we can help each other. But we keep doing more and more as we grow together, and this is gonna be a great win-win. And I’ve seen it before, thirty years I’ve seen this this story and ⁓ that’s my commitment to being a longtime trading professional is I don’t want to do anything else but help the members.
David Schmidt
Jason is a very loyal Mizzou fan and that played into my role of approving this merger. Yes, we we would not accept anyone rooted for Kansas.
Jason Peach
True loyalty.
Member from crowd
Rock Chalk
Jason Peach
Did you vote yeah?
Josh Rodriguez
Finally, the vote count.
David Schmidt
All right. We have nine hundred and seventy-two approvals, eighty-five disapprove or denial. So with the approved votes exceeding the disapproving votes by a not just a simple majority, but a big majority, Gateway Metro Federal Federal Credit Union’s membership officially voted to merge with West Community Credit Union. So thank you.
If there are no other questions or comments.
Josh Rodriguez
And that was it. Meeting over. It’s done. And it was pretty fast, wrapped up in just over twenty minutes. I was able to get some cool stuff. The gateway team audio from the meeting. All great. But I couldn’t help feeling there was something missing.
David Schmidt
One other note. Meeting Adjourned.
Josh Rodriguez
And then I could say I found it, but it was more like it found me. Or better yet she found me.
I wanna I wanna talk with you though because you’re in a unique position being a member and an employee and a member. So
Stephanie Tyler
I’m just like, I worked for Gateway.
Josh Rodriguez
Wait, wait, save it for the mic, save it for the mic. Give me give me a minute. Just don’t leave before I can talk to you.
You might recognize Stephanie Tyler’s voice. She was the genius behind the only fourth-grade art museum housed in a credit union in the entire United States. At least it was last time I checked. You can hear all about it back on episode six. Check it out. It’s one of my favorite episodes. When Stephanie first walked in the door, I figured she was attending as a West Community employee, just like I was. Because you see, Stephanie attends pretty much every community event sponsored by our credit union.
And also many that aren’t. She is a community and business development expert. She’s a longtime team member and well loved by her staff and many others across the St. Louis region. She’s a real pro. I thought I knew all about her. And then she dropped this. Whoa. Not expecting that.
Stephanie Tyler
And I was like I used to work at Gateway!
Josh Rodriguez
Okay. Was not expecting that. You need connections with both business.
Stephanie Tyler
Really cool. I do. This is like coming home for me and going full circle in my credit union life because I knew I worked for a company in the 80s that had a credit union and I was completely sold on them and I knew at that time I wanted to work for one. Then I had the opportunity to work for one in 1990 and it just happened to be Gateway Telco Credit Union.
Josh Rodriguez
Which was Gateway Metro’s previous name.
Stephanie Tyler
Exactly. Because Telco Telephone Company, it was downtown St. Louis. There was one branch. It was across the street from One Bell Center when it was just full of people all the time. And I was in the marketing department. I was the only one in the marketing department. And I I loved the philosophy. I loved everything about it. And I was just and now that we’re doing this, I’m like, my gosh, I’m going full circle in my credit union career. I started there in 90, worked there for four years, and and the only reason I left is because that was more of a marketing sitting behind a Macintosh kind of job. And I wanted to do new business development. I wanted to be out, talking to employee groups, talking to people. And this opportunity presented itself to me at you know, at West Community. And it was a tough decision because Gateway’s a great credit.
Josh Rodriguez
Gateway employee to West community employee, and now this merger was taking her right back to her roots in the credit union movement. Fascinating. But hold on. It goes even deeper.
Stephanie Tyler
Yes. So I joined Gateway when I when I worked there. So I’ve had my account there since nineteen here, here, now there since nineteen ninety. You know? And forgive me, I still keep saying Gateway Telco, but it’s Gateway Metro.
Josh Rodriguez
That’s what it is in your heart. So it’s always gonna be can’t wait till.
Stephanie Tyler
It is always gonna be Gateway Telpo. And so yeah, so just as I was sitting here, you know, I just felt I just felt really kind of honored to be here tonight, what when this was all approved. ‘Cause my the the shot I had from where I was sitting was when the chairman of the board shook the president of West Communities hand right when the deal was done. And I got a little emotional.
You know, it was just like, wow, this is like my whole career coming full circle and I’m and I’m excited about it for the members. So excited about it for the members. I think it’s two great credit unions merging together to deliver something that’s just gonna, you know, exceed what they’re even expecting.
Josh Rodriguez
It felt like you’re coming home. Coming home. As an employee and as a member owner. And that is kind of what the Gateway members are gonna experience. It’s it’s it’s it’s a really great culture fit. Everything that’s coming together, it’s gonna be for their own benefit.
Stephanie Tyler
Think so. I mean, just my slices in time with the people that I’ve met from Gateway that are, you know, coming over and that are gonna be in our department and other departments, it’s just feels so natural and comfortable. So that’s super exciting. I mean, you know, I’m in the marketing department, I’m on the community business development side. So with new branches, my gosh. I mean, there’s so much more out there now that we can do and it’s just I mean, that’s I’m super jazz.
Josh Rodriguez
Lots of opportunity.
Suddenly it all came together. Those feelings that had bubbled up in me during the drive to the meeting. Stephanie’s sentiment and passion brought it all full circle, to borrow from her words. Let’s be plain and honest. A credit union merger is a legal financial transaction. Two institutions combining into one. When the signatures dry and the milestone dates come and go, only one name will remain. When all the paperwork is filed and the regulators give their final full stamp of approval, balance sheets and income statements merge together. There’s just one brand that hangs on the shingle above each location.
And yeah, I admit, that can be a bit of a downer. Trust me, I’ve been there. Sitting on a shelf in my home office is a little green lowercase R. That tiny R once hung proudly on the front of Missouri Valley Federal Credit Union for 25 years.
There’s definitely a sense of loss. But the story goes so much deeper than that.
Jason Peach
So as a combined institution, we can leverage that scale and provide more value to the members and we can measurably do that. We can point to it. So I you know, I don’t know about other mergers, but I know in this case we’ve got a real win-win for the membership, and that’s who I’m ultimately here to serve, who our boards are here to serve.
Josh Rodriguez
West community president CEO Jason Peach.
Jason Peach
Yeah, I think w if you look at this story, you can see one credit union that had lost forty percent of its membership the last five years, asset shrinking, unable to provide the technology it needed to provide it to stay relevant to its members. Now they have a great culture and care for their members. They have a great spirit and and purpose and they have great staff, but they didn’t have the tools and the equipment to deliver to their membership in the way that they need it to. So by doing this together, we can really strengthen and support the brand that is true, that really tells a great story and builds the industry. Like anything in life, every person has a story and every credit union merger has a story. And so I can’t deny that there could be cases where there could have not been as much benefit for members or there could have been criticism. But I do know this story and I know that we are a great match together.
Gateway and West both having been chartered at least ninety years and this general community. Again we’re gonna be we’re gonna build something better together and that really benefits this local community.
⁓
Where is the real story? Is it in a building? Is it in a charter? Is it in a name? Or is it in the lives of people? Where does the purpose where does the heart actually reside? It’s not in a name. It’s not in a it’s not in brick, stone, mortar, teller machines, cash, checks, debit cards. It’s not in all those. The real story lies in the change lives.
And when a merger comes from the heart of people first of all that need help. And another group of individuals, another collective, another cooperative that are interested in helping people, then this becomes a thing of beauty and at times great necessity. Merger is not a four letter word. Quite the opposite. Well, let me rephrase that. Merger is a four letter word.
H O P E Hope. Hope that the story can continue. Hope that the philosophy can keep moving forward. That the movement can be stronger because someone had courage to pivot and change direction.
Stephanie Tyler
This is really cool. I do. This is like coming home for me.
Josh Rodriguez
Thank you so much for listening to the Banking on You Podcast. Please follow us on all the socials at @BankingOnYouPod. For show notes and additional info, visit our website, BankingOnYouPodcast.com. And let’s not forget about our incredible team. None of this would be possible without you. JD Sutter is our producer and Gandalf of Sound Design. Huge thanks to our marketing and branding team led by Kimberly Berzack. Ashley and Brian, you guys are awesome.
The Banking On You Podcast theme was composed by none other than Russ Whitelock. Thanks, Russ. Our executive producers are Jason Peach and Koren Greubel. The Banking on You podcast is powered by West Community and Tigers Community Credit Union, and I’m your host, Josh Rodriguez. Until next time, remember, we’re banking on you.
