Enrichment FCU refocuses on retail to enhance members’ lives
The Tennessee cooperative says PPP lending helped borrowers and the credit union alike — but at the cost of strategic initiatives.
Enrichment Federal Credit Union ($652.0M, Oak Ridge, TN) helped bail out nearly 400 small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program but says it’s now time to move on.
According to Craig Peters, CEO of the Knoxville-area credit union, PPP lending generated goodwill and income. More importantly, it helped a lot of small businesses stay afloat during the pandemic, but these benefits came at significant organizational expense.
“It has sucked the energy out of executing on the strategic plan we laid out for 2020 and 2021,” Peters says. “Those strategies have more long-term impact on Enrichment and our members than our participation in PPP lending.”
The CEO says his cooperative is the only one he’s aware of in the East Tennessee area that handled PPP work internally rather than outsourcing it, and a few credit union peers with larger business portfolios declined to participate in the program.
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