Mike Mercer has dedicated his career to advancing the capabilities of American credit unions in fulfilment of their mission to improve the financial well-being of people. He has become a champion for the cooperative business model, regarding it as the best foundation for delivering value fairly to the members.
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Mike’s credit union career began in 1977 as a part-time employee at ICU Services Corp, the business subsidiary of the Credit Union National Association. He was tasked to work on a relatively new project called US Central Credit Union, then the credit union system’s primary point of connection to the wholesale money markets. In 1980, during a severe system-wide liquidity crisis, Mike left US Central to lead the insolvent Georgia Central Credit Union, one of US Central’s members.
In 1983, Mike was instrumental in combining the meager resources of Georgia Central and the Georgia League into an innovative structure that became known as Georgia Credit Union Affiliates. Mike was named CEO of the new combination in 1985 and served in that post until it was consolidated with the Leagues serving Alabama and Florida credit unions in 2019. This consolidation created a credit union community in the southeast consisting of 340 credit unions serving more than 10 million members. He retired from League work at the end of 2019. In 2020, Mike formed COOPR8 Consulting and engaged in the work of bringing co-ops from other sectors together with credit unions in cross-sector collaborations.
Over his career, Mike served on many regional and national credit union/co-op support organizations. Among them, he served on the AACUL, CUNA and NCB boards, holding chairmanship roles on each. He served on numerous other boards and committees throughout his career. In addition, he organized an international partnership with credit unions in Poland, which was formalized in 1995. Another partnership with credit unions in the UK was established in recent years.
Mike has been recognized for his work with many awards of appreciation. Among them are the credit union system’s highest recognition, the Herb Wegner lifetime achievement award. In addition, Mike was inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame. For his work in Poland, he was recognized with the Knights Cross, the highest governmental award to non-Polish citizens.
Mike lives in Atlanta. He has three children and they have provided the family with five grandchildren.
