Spectra Credit Union's board of directors had the facts, heard the presentations and are now looking at the analysis while preparing a recommendation to take to their members within the next few days.

The subject at hand is a proposed merger with another provincial credit union that will provide a much larger scope of business for regional businesses and CU members.

Conexus Credit Union and Affinity Credit Union have made their presentations to Spectra's directors and a detailed comparison and analysis is underway, said Spectra's chief executive officer Tim Schroh last week when contacted by The Mercury.

Conexus and Affinity were considered to be the only two provincial CUs with a wide enough provincial scope and reach to fill Spectra's growing requirements. Conexus, headquartered in Regina, boasts of assets of around $4 billion while Affinity, centred in Saskatoon, lists about $2.5 billion in assets compared with Spectra's $700 million.

“The board members received the analysis report July 19 and have been working on it and they are meeting within the week to provide a recommendation that they will take to the membership,” said Schroh.

Both of the larger credit unions were willing to meet Spectra's guiding principles that included such things as a continuation of local presences among its nine branches, community participation and decision making, et al.

“The recommendation that will probably be announced by Friday, will say 'here's why we chose A or B,” said Schroh.

The amalgamation or merger with a larger credit union has been seen as a necessity for some time due to Spectra's unprecedented growth, which has outstripped its profits. Spectra requires strong equity profits, the CEO said and “as you can well imagine, the requirements on the commercial side are tremendous right now and the business requests are flirting with our capacity to handle them all, thus the need to seek a strong provincial partner.”

Schroh said that the recommended merger can't be viewed negatively or as a sign of Spectra giving anything up in the process since in Saskatchewan “it's in our DNA to be co-operatively involved and committed to our communities. We abide by these fundamentals of the credit union and they will continue.”

The first public indication that a merger was being sought was brought forward at this past spring's annual general meeting. The guiding principles were released shortly after that meeting, which outlined the expectations that would have to be met by any credit union that came courting. The executive had noted that one major factor for any bidder had to be province-wide exposure and presence.