BURBANK, Calif.—Two California credit unions serving the entertainment industry have announced plans to merge.
The $236-million SAG-AFTRA FCU here said it intends to absorb via merger the $73-million the Musicians’ Interguild Credit Union, based in Los Angeles. The merger has already been approval by state and federal regulators, and has been approved by the boards of the SAFCU and the MICU. The combination must now be approved by the MICU’s 6,300 members. Ballots will be counted June 26, according to Deadline.com.
MICU Board Chairman Stephan Zupkas told the publication that the board had for some time been looking for ways to better serve the needs of the membership and to “stay relevant to them. After much analysis, it became clear that the best way to accomplish that is to merge with a larger, well-run credit union that offers many of the products and services that our members expect.
“We took a long hard look at this,” Zupkas continued. “The board’s responsibility is to serve our members the best we can, and we determined that more products and more branches to serve them would create a stronger institution. And the SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union has the same goal as we do — to serve the performer.”
In a statement to Deadline.com, SAG-AFTRA FCU Board Chair Kerri Tombazian said, “This is an opportunity to expand and improve services to the Musicians Interguild Credit Union members, partly because the SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union has services and products that they don’t have. We have very similar fields of membership and many Musicians Union members are also SAG-AFTRA members. And their field of membership includes some other entertainment union members. So it’s a very well-matched field of membership. Obviously, in these financial times, it’s just a great thing to be able to join forces and have a stronger unified body.”