Grand River Credit Union

Grand River Credit Union: A Rich History

Grand River Credit Union was formed on October 1, 2004 through the amalgamation of Brant Community Credit Union and Waterloo Regional Credit Union. Both credit unions have rich histories, with their original charters granted in the forties (1947 for Waterloo Regional Credit Union and 1949 for Brant Community Credit Union). Today Grand River boasts over 21,000 members and over $280 million in assets.

Grand River’s Financial Platform: Portfolio Plus

Grand River Credit Union Case Study (PDF)

From a technology perspective, Portfolio Plus, from Strategic Information Technology Limited has been Grand River’s primary banking platform since 2002 and has been leveraged to create products and services that compete head on with larger financial institutions. Today, Grand River uses Portfolio Plus modules to manage its retail banking, term deposits, investments, loans and mortgages, ATM interfaces, IVR interface, and more.

“Portfolio Plus allows us to grow our membership and product line with virtually no limits.”
  -- Kerry Hadad, CEO, Grand River Credit Union

Success: Service, Attractive Rates and Technology Leverage

"We’ve attained our success through superior member service, competitive rates, and by leveraging the power of Portfolio Plus banking software,” says Kerry Hadad, CEO of Grand River. "Portfolio Plus allows us to grow our membership and product line with virtually no limits. This supports our strategy of providing a high level of service to our community members while also offering the same products large financial companies offer, but at competitive rates."

Grand River Credit Union: Products

Grand River offers a complete spectrum of financial services including retail accounts, lines of credit, mortgages, term deposits, ATM services, wealth management and more.

Conversion from Infonancial

One of the most recent challenges that faced Grand River was conversion of a banking platform running Infonancial software to the Portfolio Plus banking platform. The merging of the two computer systems was completed with no disruption to member service. “SIT worked with us on an optimal approach with multiple dry-runs before the actual merger of the two systems,” says Al Siemens, Manager of Administrative Services at Grand River. “The conversion project gave us increased confidence that SIT will help us face even larger challenges in the future.”

“The conversion project gave us increased confidence that SIT will help us face even larger challenges in the future.”
  -- Al Siemens, Manager of Administrative Services

Grand River Credit Union & SIT

"Grand River has proven to be a valuable partner,” says G. Robert Leeming, CEO of Strategic Information Technology, “they’ve enriched our experience with the unique challenges faced by credit unions today and helped us adjust our outlook for the credit union market overall. We look forward to supporting their aspirations over the upcoming years.”

Grand River Credit Union: Change of Platform

Grand River also recently converted from an aging server running the SCO operating system, to a new high performance Dell server running Red Hat Linux. Since Portfolio Plus is a multi-platform solution, the transition was accomplished with ease. Portfolio Plus is supported on a wide variety of server platforms including Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Red Hat Linux and MS-Windows Server. “From a cost per performance perspective it’s hard to beat the Dell and Red Hat combination,” says Eric Ilaqua, VP of Technical Services for Strategic Information Technology. “We’re extremely pleased with the performance results we’ve seen to date.”

About Strategic Information Technology Limited

SIT, formed in 1988, develops and markets Portfolio Plus, an extensible banking system that enables customers to plug-in new functionality as required. This is accomplished via SIT's unique Plug-In Banking^TM architecture and a Financial Services Bus^TM that extends Portfolio Plus functionality to other corporate applications. SIT's banking software enables banks and non-banks to offer web banking, loans, loan securitization, investments, term deposits, wealth management, retail, ATM/POS switch interfaces for debit/credit or loyalty products, leasing, Equifax and Trans Union credit bureau interfaces, registered investment products, and much more. Portfolio Plus can also be tailored, on request, to meet specific customer requirements.

Portfolio Plus, Plug-In Banking and Financial Services Bus are trademarks or registered trademarks of SIT in the U.S., Canada and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. For more information, please contact:

Patrick Lannigan
Strategic Information Technology
Telephone: 905-640-0808 x356
Email: patrickl@stratinfotech.com