ANCHORAGE, Alaska–Global Credit Union has laid off 185 employees, including 78 in its home state of Alaska.
The $11.78-billion Global Credit Union, which was formerly Alaska USA FCU before a merger with Washington-based Global CU, told the Anchorage Daily News the move is in response to a downturn in lending activity due to the rapid rise in interest rates.
“These are hard conversations to have, but it’s a necessary step to right-size the operations based on the volumes of activity in certain areas of lending,” Spokesperson Tim Woolston told the Anchorage Daily News. “Anybody in our business nationally is having to look at the same sort of thing because we’re in such a different place in terms of lending.”
Global CU posted $2.457 million in net income for the first quarter, with capital at 10.28%.
The Daily News reported that Global CU grew its staff numbers as lending surged during the lower-rate environment of several years ago.
What the Numbers Show
The Anchorage Daily News reported that Global Credit Union had made approximately16,000 loans through the end of March, down from 27,000 during the same period in 2022. Global CU said most of the cuts are coming in the CU’s lending department and will be spread across Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho and Washington, Woolston said. Smaller staff reductions will occur in the project management and technology departments, the credit union added.
Proportionally fewer cuts are happening in Alaska than in the Lower 48, he said. Half the company’s workforce is located in Alaska, and those operations are seeing about a 7% reduction in staff, the Anchorage Daily News stated.
The layoffs were effective last week but the employees are still on the payroll under a 30-day severance package, Woolston said.
Seeking to Fill Internal Vacancies
Global CU told the publication it is working to find many of them new jobs within the company and will be given preference for more than 100 open positions, many of them at call centers, that are no longer being publicly advertised so they can be filled internally. Woolston said many of the open positions are in Alaska, and the credit union’s layoff numbers are expected to shrink significantly.
“That’s what organizations have to do,” Woolston said. “You have to shift people around to meet the demands as the demands of the business change.”
Even after the layoffs, Global CU told the Anchorage Daily News still employs more people than before the pandemic began in 2020, he said.
Make Sure You’re Receiving CUToday.info’s Free Daily Newsletter Headlines
Are you missing out on the latest news in credit unions? Missing the trends and developments you need to be aware of? We can help. Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily Fresh Today news update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more.
And it’s free!
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?
Please note and/or make your IT department or email administrator aware the emails will be coming from the domains CUTodayinfo.com and CUTodayinfoReply.com.