By Ray Birch
TAMPA— When Chuck Fagan talks about stepping down as President/CEO of Velera, he doesn’t sound like an executive making a sudden exit. He sounds like someone finishing a relay handoff that started years ago.
“This is bittersweet, but it’s something that we’ve been working toward for many years,” Fagan told CUToday.info, describing a transition he said reflects both long-term board planning and the company’s confidence in its strategy.
For Velera—the payments and technology CUSO born from the combination of PSCU and Co-op Solutions—the announced Sept. 30 retirement of Fagan and Oct. 1 elevation of Brian Caldarelli is being framed less as a changing of the guard than as proof the combined organization believes it is exactly where it hoped to be.
That sense of continuity is central to the story. Fagan, who has led the organization and its predecessor PSCU for 11 years, said one of the clearest signs a company is “on the right track” is when a senior executive can rise internally to the top job. In Caldarelli, Velera is turning to a leader who has spent 13 years inside the organization, first joining PSCU as CFO in 2012, later helping steer major strategic efforts including the creation of Lumin Digital, the internal “Transforming Together” initiative, and—most notably in recent years—the integration of PSCU and Co-op.
Since the January 2024 combination that created Velera, Caldarelli has served as executive vice president and chief administrative officer while also leading the Integration Management Office.
Both executives said the next six months will be focused on an active transition, not a symbolic handoff. Fagan called the transition period “the perfect amount of time,” noting that he and Caldarelli have worked together for more than 11 years and that the incoming president/CEO already knows the organization deeply.
Market-Facing Focus
“Over the next six months, he and I are going to spend time connecting with the industry, connecting with our key partners, connecting with credit unions that we get the honor to work with,” Fagan said. “We’ll gradually shift more and more things over to Brian…and we’ll have him really ready for Oct. 1.”
Caldarelli said his own focus will be external and highly visible.
“My attention will probably be very market facing, very external. I’ll be on the road, speaking to as many credit unions and employees as I can,” he said. “That is absolutely my focus.”
Asked what message he wants to send to credit unions about the transition, Caldarelli stressed continuity—and momentum.
“We as an organization are as strong as we’ve ever been,” he said. “You’ve got an incredible company that Chuck has helped develop and lead. The vision of the organization is in the right spot.”
He pointed to Velera’s broader payments ecosystem and what he described as “some exciting things” ahead, especially around technology and AI.
“The rapid evolution of AI… and really service—I think the notion of inspired service is something that we as a company, as a leadership team, really take to heart,” Caldarelli said. “We’re going to see a lot of that focus coming in front of us in the future.”
For Fagan, the transition also offered a moment to reflect on what he is most proud of after 11 years leading PSCU and then Velera—and his answer started with people.
“The first would be our people,” Fagan said. “I’ll use COVID as an example—we didn’t lay off a single person during COVID. In fact, we grew our employee base.”
He said the company’s employee engagement has earned outside recognition, but what matters most to him is seeing “how passionate they are about our business and the industry that we serve.”
Fagan said the second source of pride is the collaboration that brought PSCU and Co-op together.
“This industry talks about we are most powerful when we collaborate, and I absolutely believe that,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s a better example of industry collaboration than now PSCU and Co-op—two incredible industry assets coming together.”
He added that the merger created a stronger platform not only for payments, but also for shared branching and other services designed to support “credit union relevancy, credit union success and growth.”
Even as he prepares to retire, Fagan made clear he sees Velera’s role as bigger than simply serving clients.
Key Credit Union Partner
“Velera has been a significant partner to the industry,” he said, citing not only financial support, but also employee involvement across the movement and the company’s role in payments expertise and advocacy support for leagues, America’s Credit Unions and the Defense Credit Union Council.
“We’ll continue keeping our focus on being the best partner to the industry that we can be—and Brian absolutely believes in that as well,” Fagan said.
Caldarelli, meanwhile, said he sees the coming months as a chance to absorb even more from the executive he will replace.
“I’ve had 11 years working with Chuck on virtually all facets of the business,” he said. “I’m going to take the next six months to extract as much knowledge as I possibly can with him.”
And what comes after Sept. 30 for Fagan? There was some humor in that answer, too.
“I keep telling my wife we’re going to go get the mail together and she tells me all the time I’m not going to be messing up her schedule,” Fagan said.
Beyond that, he said he’s looking forward to more golf, more time at the family’s river place and, perhaps most importantly, more time with his grandchildren.
“I missed a lot of my kids growing up,” he said. “Fortunately, my wife was able to be at those activities, but I’m going to get to spend a lot of time with activities with our grandchildren, and I’ll really cherish that opportunity.”