- In the past year the Biden administration increased its the scrutiny of bank transactions by the regulators.
- Insider Intelligence publishes hundreds of insight, charts and forecasts about the banking industry.
The latest news is that the The Florida-based VyStar Credit Union and Georgia-based Heritage Bank have called off their merger agreement. The two companies claim that a series of mobile and web interruptions as well as a decline on economic growth in the US business outlook is the main culprits.
More details about the cancellation the merger deal to be an “go” as recently as April and Heritage Bank CEO Leonard Moreland saying it was a priority. However, this week, both banks decided that they couldn’t meet all the conditions required to complete the deal within the timeframe they had set.
Heritage Bank’s Moreland announced that it will take a different path in light of a more favorable post-pandemic climate and strong capital position.
VyStar intends to continue its expansion in Georgia alone.
Trade associations, such as those of the Community Bankers Association of Georgia are pleased that the agreement was not a success, since they believe that credit cooperatives’ tax-exempt status confers them an unfair advantage when buying communities banks.
This merger could have created VyStar the 13th-largest institution of credit in the US with assets worth $12.5 billion as well as 850,000 members. branches in 88.
Outages and upgrades: A few weeks back, VyStar experienced news-making outages and interruptions to the online as well as mobile banking platforms.
The credit union had announced an scheduled outage to upgrade its system by the software provider Nymbus for 2 days during May.
However, up to six weeks after some customers experienced problems and were unable login to their account.
People who were close to the Vystar-Heritage deal confirmed that the merger was not canceled off because of problems with service. However, the outages underscore the delicate balance in modernization as well as confidence in technology. Financial institutions are focusing on technology advancements to keep pace with the digital banking requirements. Many of them work with third-party fintech companies in order to help make this process less expensive and faster. Like VyStar’s case, choosing a reliable software vendor is crucial to ensuring confidence in the customer and is a matter of cautious thoroughness.
