By Ray Birch
ORLANDO, Fla.— Brian Caldarelli told credit unions Tuesday that when he takes over as Velera’s president and CEO on Oct. 1, the goal will not be to remake the company, but to build on what is already working—while moving faster, tightening execution and making it easier for credit unions to serve members.
Speaking during a Tuesday morning fireside chat at VeleraLIVE 2026 with current President and CEO Chuck Fagan and Board Chair Cathie Tierney, Caldarelli repeatedly stressed continuity over disruption, telling attendees the foundation Fagan and the board have built “is not changing” and “doesn’t need to.”
Instead, he said his focus will be on accelerating decisions, sharpening service and strengthening the company’s ability to help credit unions navigate a faster-moving payments and technology landscape.
“October 1, I promise I’m not going to come in here and say everything’s broken, because look, it’s not,” Caldarelli said. “The foundation of this company, our purpose, our strategy, the way we show up for our clients—that’s not changing. It doesn’t need to.”
He added the goal is to “build on that” and “accelerate that,” not for the sake of doing more, but by being more focused about where Velera puts its energy and how quickly it acts.
Clear Insight
The discussion offered one of the clearest public looks yet at how Velera wants member credit unions to view the transition from Fagan to Caldarelli: as a carefully managed succession, not a strategic reset. Tierney said the board had been working on long-term succession planning for years and that the process included both internal and external candidates.
“It wasn’t a reactive decision,” she said. “It’s the result of a very deliberate and thoughtful process that we’ve been building toward for a long time.”
Tierney said the board was looking for more than payments expertise. Just as important, she said, was finding someone with a deep understanding of the credit union mission and a proven ability to navigate complexity without damaging relationships.
“What we needed was someone with payments expertise, of course, but it was also really important to us that we had someone who understood and had a passion for the credit union mission at a very fundamental level,” she said. “Brian checks every one of those boxes.”
Caldarelli pointed to his leadership of the PSCU-Co-op Solutions integration as an example of the approach he intends to carry forward. He said the guiding principle throughout that process was simple: “Do no harm to our people and do no harm to our clients.”
That, he said, became the filter for thousands of decisions around benefits, titles, roles, systems and product alignment as the two organizations came together.
“That’s not just a line—that’s a decision filter,” he said, noting employee engagement scores actually rose during the integration because staff felt heard, informed and supported.
For credit unions, that emphasis on culture and service may have been the most revealing part of the conversation.
Caldarelli said “service automatically becomes top of mind” at Velera and argued that it has to be felt in every interaction, not just talked about from the stage.
Not A Buzzword
“It can’t just be a buzzword,” he said. “It’s how we show up that matters. It’s how we make things right.” He described “inspired service” as putting yourself in the member’s shoes, being proactive, studying client feedback closely and fixing problems before they become larger issues.
He also made clear that faster execution will not come at the expense of the company’s people-first culture. Caldarelli pointed to Velera’s recognition by Forbes for company culture, its decision not to lay off a single employee during COVID and its response during hurricanes Helene and Milton, when he said the company helped employees secure water, emergency supplies and temporary housing.
“That’s what culture looks like when it matters,” he said. “It shows up in how people take care of each other.”
Fagan, for his part, used the session to reinforce the idea that the handoff is exactly what succession planning is supposed to produce. He said one of a CEO’s “crowning goals” should be being able to hand an organization to a leader like Caldarelli, and said the discipline of developing talent is something he carried into Velera from earlier stops in his career.
“As a CEO, one of your crowning goals has to be to be able to hand it over to someone like Brian,” Fagan said. “That is special to me.”
He also described Caldarelli as someone who “stays calm, stays focused and always keeps the people in the room.”
Tierney, who is also president and CEO of Community First CU in Wisconsin, underscored why that matters from the perspective of a member-owner credit union. She said credit unions like hers view Velera not as a typical vendor, but as an extension of their own teams.
“I don’t just have 600 employees, I have more than 5,000 employees added on to our team at Community First,” she said, asserting that Velera’s scale, research, consulting and operational support make it an integral part of how many credit unions serve members.