ELYRIA, Ohio–School Employees Lorain County Credit Union here is expanding its field of membership beyond people in the county who work in education.
As it marks its 60th anniversary, the credit union has opened its membership to anyone who lives, works, worships or attends school in Lorain, Cuyahoga, Medina or Erie counties.
“We wanted to get into that market to help expand the credit union,” CEO Neil Sommers told The Morning Journal.
The credit union was started in 1958 with a group of teachers from Midview High School near Grafton, Ohio. In 2014, the School Employees credit union merged with the Lorain School Employees Credit Union and it has grown to $155 million in assets and approximately 12,000 members.
“How do you get that to grow when there’s not an influx of a lot of new teachers?” Sommers asked in discussing the move with The Morning Journal. “We needed to look and say, how we can diversify our membership and make it continue to grow the credit union? In order to do that the board felt the best policy was to become a community charter so that puts us out there in the same level field as the other community chartered credit unions.”