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Credit union switch on hold

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The Nelson and District Credit Union’s switch to a new banking system

The Big Switch has been delayed.

The Nelson and District Credit Union planned to close for four days starting Friday to upgrade to a new banking system, but marketing manager Tom Atkins says they’ve postponed it because they don’t feel they’re ready.

“Our mission from the start was to be readiness-driven, not date driven,” he explains. “We reviewed our readiness document, which is almost a thousand-point checklist, and there were a few issues that weren’t up to the standard we expected.”

Atkins says those issues involved the Memberdirect mobile banking system and ATM point-of-sales, and they didn’t want members to have problems following the conversion, so they decided to hold up.

“We’re expecting from the system provider that a lot of these issues will be resolved in a couple of system upgrades over the next two months,” he says.

“We want minimal impact to the membership, so we’re going to wait until we’re comfortable.”

No new date has been set for the changeover, but Atkins hopes it will be in the next two to four months. He says they are actively working with several third-party providers who support home, telephone, and Internet banking, and trying to find a mutually agreeable time.

The switch will still be done over a weekend and require a closure of all branches.

“The process hasn’t changed, it’s just going to be a different four days,” Atkins says.

While they felt they had done a good job alerting members of the transition and getting them ready for it, now they have to switch gears and advise them it’s not going to happen just yet.

“They’ve been inquiring about it, and now that they’ve seen the delay is happening, they understand our decision,” Atkins says.

Further updates will be posted at nelsoncu.com/switch.