DUBLIN, Ireland–Former CUNA president and CUNA Mutual executive Ralph Swoboda has died. A source told CUToday.info Mr. Swoboda has had health issues in recent years even as he has remained active in credit unions with a software company in Ireland, where he has been living, that provides services to credit unions.
Swoboda served as general counsel of CUNA in 1976 before being named president/CEO in 1987, a position he held until 1995, before resigning from the trade group and being succeeded by Dan Mica.
Swoboda was well-known to many in credit unions. After exiting CUNA he was named senior vice president of international operations by CUNA Mutual Group, where he did work in China as the company worked to expand its product offerings to that country’s credit cooperatives in the early 2000s.
After doing work with credit unions in Australia and the United Kingdom, where he served on the Management Committee of the Association of British Credit Unions, Ltd., Swoboda landed in Dublin, Ireland, having spent more than 40 years in credit unions.
In 2013, he bought out the owner of CUFA, Ltd., a company doing work in the U.K. on risk and analytics, with that partner taking the company’s banking clients and Swoboda retaining the credit union clients.
In 2018 Swoboda told CUToday.info he started with seven credit unions onboard, and at that time the company had grown to approximately 50. CUFA also licensed its software for distribution in the U.S.
The ‘Filene of Europe’
in 2017 Swoboda joined with two other people in the British credit union movement to create The Centre for Community Finance Europe, an initiative he described as “basically the Filene Research Center of Europe.”
Swoboda was also one of the co-founders of Filene in the U.S.
Swoboda, who retained a home in Madison, Wis., is survived by his wife, Sheryl.
He spoke with CUToday.info’s Frank J. Diekmann about his career and his life in Ireland and more here.