What does it take to lead a community credit union for over a decade while honoring a 42-year legacy? In this episode of Credit Union Conversations, Mark Ritter talks with Amey Sgrignoli, CEO of Belco Community Credit Union, about navigating executive succession, evolving board governance, and building a standout brand in a competitive market. Amey shares how her roots in business lending shaped her leadership style and why strong member relationships, smart fintech partnerships, and a commitment to financial education remain at the heart of Belco's growth strategy.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

✅ How to navigate credit union leadership transitions from a long-tenured CEO while preserving institutional culture and accelerating forward momentum.

✅ Why intentional board governance and proactive volunteer recruitment are critical to a community credit union's long-term health and strategic direction.

✅ How to evaluate fintech partnerships with eyes wide open, protecting your brand reputation while still embracing digital banking innovation and technology.

✅ How staying rooted in member relationships and financial education helps a growing credit union compete against larger regional banks and institutions.

Subscribe to Credit Union Conversations for the latest credit union trends and insights on loan volume and business lending! Connect with MBFS to boost your credit union’s growth today.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Introduction: Meet Amey Sgrignoli of Belco Community CU

05:47 Lessons learned from an executive succession transition following a 42-year CEO legacy at Belco Community CU

08:55 Evolving board governance, volunteer recruitment pipelines, and building a high-performing credit union board

13:53 Being the face of the credit union community-wide

18:53 Competing with larger institutions by leading with member relationships, branch technology, and financial education

24:12 Evaluating fintech partnerships and using the CUSO model to access expertise beyond your asset size

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

💎 Credit union leadership transitions work best when they are deliberate and methodical. Amey co-led Belco Community CU for nearly a year before her predecessor retired, creating stability while opening space for a new vision to emerge.

💎 Strong board governance does not happen by accident. Belco Community CU built a volunteer pipeline over the years, recruiting members with the right qualifications and passion to ensure the board kept pace with industry change.

💎 When vetting fintech partnerships, due diligence is everything. Chasing trends without careful evaluation can expose your credit union to brand reputation, security, and operational risks that outweigh any short-term gain.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Belco Community Credit Union

Amey Sgrignoli - LinkedIn

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Mark Ritter - Website

Mark Ritter - LinkedIn

SEO KEYWORDS:

Credit Union Conversations, Mark Ritter, MBFS, Credit Unions, CUSO, Small Credit Unions, Community Credit Union, Executive Succession, Board Governance, Business Lending, Member Relationships, Fintech Partnerships, Financial Education, Digital Banking, Institutional Culture, CUSO Model

[00:00:33] So I'm very happy for today because I love talking to CEOs and hearing their stories and what's going on in the credit union space, and just talking about the state of the world. Joining me today is Amy scr Noli from Belco Community Credit Union. Amy, how are you doing today?

[00:00:55] Mark Ritter: Do you do a lot of podcast interviews?

[00:01:01] Mark Ritter: So when this drops, I always find it if when you get in your car with your family, if you just want to turn it on and just keep it playing and see how long it takes for them to pick up. So

[00:01:12] Mark Ritter: Thanks for joining us today and I always like for people to start out, tell people a little bit about your career journey, your background up until you got the corner office there at Belco.

[00:01:44] So I've always had lending functional roles from consumer lending on up through to the various types of loans and lending that. We do here at Velco. I came in as a consumer loan coordinator and then over time [00:02:00] got some exposure to mortgage lending, business, lending our call center, and spent some time just doing a lot of the behind the scenes operational details that we all know are associated with making loans, servicing loans, and uh, making sure that we're collecting on our loans.

[00:02:44] External education and mentoring and move through this exec executive succession planning and the role development process here at Malco before moving into a couple of different roles, which were [00:03:00] more executive vice president roles, and then ultimately being selected as the CEO, as our executives started retiring and moving out and moving on.

[00:03:21] Mark Ritter: Wow.

[00:03:23] Mark Ritter: I remember it like it was yesterday.

[00:03:25] Mark Ritter: So tell people listening. I'm very familiar with Belco, obviously, but tell people listening nationwide about, a little bit about the profile, the credit union, where you're at, what type of credit union you are, a little, just your, a little bit of your story.

[00:04:04] Everything in between there we're fairly insulated from some of the highs and lows of what goes on in the economy, but we have a heavy concentration in government workers. A lot of education is rooted here, and we also have some, some pretty strong just government workers and military work that happens here in our community.

[00:04:45] Still consider ourselves to be one of the smaller credit unions in the area. Continue to grow through just a grassroots approach, having a presence in our communities, positioning ourselves as a provider of financial [00:05:00] services, but also a partner in helping with financial education, financial literacy in the community, both through the schools and just directly and generally with our members to help them to chart out a financial plan and make their financial future successful.

[00:05:21] Mark Ritter: That's great. I always like to think of Belco as if you see a horse and buggy on the road, you're eligible for membership.

[00:05:37] Mark Ritter: So you have 12, 13 years of the CEO transition you have being that new CEO behind you.

[00:06:12] It wasn't somebody who was there for five or 10 years. It was very entrenched. What was your thought process, good lessons learned, things you might do different as part of that new CEO role?

[00:06:45] Lean into what the future could look like for the credit union. So it was done, the transition was done in a very methodical way. So we had a lengthy time period where we co-led the credit union up to [00:07:00] about a year, I think, before he was officially retired and gone from the credit union. So we took our time.

[00:07:31] We were pretty intentional about making it a long and drawn out transition, and that came probably with both pros and cons. We definitely got very rooted in the legacy aspect of things, and it probably slowed us down from being able to make a lot of change happen quickly, but at the time, it felt like the right thing to do, and I would say that it still gave us a very balanced approach.

[00:08:22] Mark Ritter: Yeah, I always find it interesting. Uh, when I started at MBFS, we were a company of three people. We're now 60 some, and Belco has grown immensely. But one thing that I've learned is that almost those, you really have two jobs. You have the managing the credit union, and then you have managing the board, which it could be just as important and critical in terms of keeping everybody aligned.

[00:08:55] The benefit that we had initially was that we did not [00:09:00] have a lot of turnover or change at the board level. So you had that same group pivot that had been here from the beginning and for many years, a lot of them over 20 years of service, some of them also 30, 40 year board members.

[00:09:40] We didn't have a lot of new or fresh faces coming onto our board for probably a period of five or six years when I first started. So I think that was a benefit too. 'cause there was a lot of stability there and a lot of people there to remind you of the way things had been, the way they should be. And [00:10:00] folks that had also weathered some storms with the credit union before.

[00:10:24] We have a lot more very deliberate succession planning that we do. We have tried to build a pipeline of volunteers that will be ready and able to step into voting board positions and supervisory committee roles when we need them. So we are a lot more deliberate, a lot more intentional about recruiting for and attracting volunteers that will be, have the right qualifications and be ready and able to step in.

[00:11:17] And so it's been an interesting transition because it is. Very different than it was when I initially took over the CEO role, but different in a positive way. It's just that a lot of change has occurred over that period of time and it needed to stay the course but also stay, keep up with, and. Keep pace with the amount of change that's going on in the industry,

[00:11:54] And that remained for a lot. And some credit unions still have a very [00:12:00] concentrated board from their legacy.

[00:12:03] Mark Ritter: But you're a community credit union. You have multiple towns. You, and you also need just diversity of opinions and skill sets and some business people, some educational people, some operate, and the more you have a healthy conversation as opposed to just a concentrated legacy board.

[00:12:24] Yeah, it's been a lot of work and it is a big part of the role is being in the community and being among the membership to be able to recognize where we have potential future volunteers, and also being able to recognize those members that have a passion for the credit union. They not, might not be suited for a volunteer director role, but there's a way to engage with them through committee work and other volunteering in the community that we do that we have a place for everyone, but not everyone makes a good, strong credit union board [00:13:00] member.

[00:13:03] Mark Ritter: That's great. So we deal here with about 120 ish credit unions nationwide. And I am going to put you in the top 5% of credit union CEOs who are part of their community. You're everywhere. Okay. I want to talk about that. The good and bad of that. And I think it's important that the CEO is the face of the organization.

[00:13:53] I'll start out by saying I, I had a lot to learn when I moved into the role because I wanted to take [00:14:00] advantage of every opportunity.

[00:14:25] It's very challenging and it takes time to learn and figure that out. The way I do it now, I've gone full circle with it where I was pretty heavily involved with the credit Union Association at the state level. Then ultimately spent some time at the national level on the CUNA board before they went through their merger with America's credit unions.

[00:15:14] There was a period of time where things were going really well at the credit union. We didn't have much economic or regulatory headwinds going on, and it was okay and easy to be out traveling to board meetings and spending time in the credit union community and building relationships and doing a lot of collaborating.

[00:16:05] Instead of being so broad and spread across the credit union industry, just trying to be more present here locally. And I think you just, it's a balancing act and you have to balance it based on what your credit union's needs are. So recognizing that there are going to be times where you need to be more present in your credit union.

[00:16:51] So making sure that you are balancing it, and I probably pushed that to its limits over the years, but feeling [00:17:00] like with age and experience and time comes, wisdom and learning now that it's much better to balance that and be very strategic about where you pick your spots and. Get involved where you can make the most difference and also make it work for your own schedule and your own personal work life balance as well.

[00:17:39] Find something you're passionate about and let that be your connection and it's one thing off of your plate.

[00:18:04] So making sure that. It's not always just the CEO and the community, but that you're reaching out to and tapping some of your other leaders on the shoulder because it helps them in their own professional development. But it also enables the credit union to get out into the community even more and spread, spread the love around a little bit more, if you will.

[00:18:53] You're approaching a billion dollars, but you have two. I'll call the mega credit unions [00:19:00] in your backyard. How do you balance yourself ver How do you balance of dealing with some of the larger credit unions, collaborating with other credit unions and competition gi, given your thought process, building, how do you build your niche?

[00:19:40] We do network together frequently. We pick up the phone and we have conversations when we need to. So the credit union movement and philosophy is alive and thriving here in central pa for sure. So we look more at some of our [00:20:00] regional banks and larger financial institutions. Outside of the credit union, it just industry is more of our competitors and try to look to the credit union movement as our collaborative partners and ways that we could either be working through QSOs or FinTech relationships or things of that nature so that you can continue to evolve and grow the credit union movement together rather than viewing each other as competitors.

[00:20:55] And we recovered fairly quickly and life [00:21:00] moved on versus I, I, we deal with some of the southern markets now and where it's just explosive growth and it's not gonna last forever. Whereas Belco in central Pennsylvania, it's pretty stable even on the bad days. H how. What's happened is, as you mentioned, there's a lot of comp that bank competition.

[00:21:21] Mark Ritter: When it comes to, you know, that Belco brand and making a choice, how do you have Belco stand out a little bit more? Where do you try to shine or make those differences?

[00:21:42] In person engagement with members remains available to them, and that we lead with as a credit union that works to build relationships, whether that's in person, over the phone, online, or through some digital mechanism. We try to focus on the [00:22:00] relationship aspect of it, building strong relationships and helping members to achieve financial success.

[00:22:35] And that kind of a unique blend and mix of the experience that a member's going to have when they come to our credit union, we feel like meets the member where they're at, and also allows us to develop relationships with members that enable them to use technology. It optimizes convenience for them, and it also optimizes that desire or that need when you have a more complex [00:23:00] transaction.

[00:23:20] We don't allow that to take away the in-person experience as well. So we're trying to balance and be the best of both worlds. So giving them a technology experience and also still giving them an in-person experience when they need it and when they want it.

[00:23:44] Sometimes I forget that, but I'm a hundred percent credit union owned company. I consider myself closer to a credit union than a FinTech third party tech company, so I feel like there are more. [00:24:00] Fintechs Lending Partners Solutions, origi, whether it be they're partnering with you, their com, you know how everybody's wanting to be the next FinTech partner with Belco Community Credit Union.

[00:24:25] Yeah. I think it's back on the credit union to do a really solid job of vetting who your partners are going to be in this business.

[00:24:56] You don't know what kind of a brand reputation risk you [00:25:00] might be exposing yourself to. We try to be very cautious and careful and pick partners that are going to be the best for our brand and also operationally efficient and effective. Meaning their payoff and their return on the investment that we're making with them is there so that we're using our members money wisely.

[00:25:43] Really good, solid due diligence is the way that we try to manage and control for some of those risks. Picking the right partners, and we've probably picked some that weren't so great and we've picked some that have been really great and we see a lot of value in the [00:26:00] QSO arrangements. The QSO arrangements that we do participate in hold a lot of value for us.

[00:26:35] Mark Ritter: I appreciate it, Amy, and I've enjoyed my relationship with the gang at Belco over the years, and I appreciate taking out some time to talk with us here. So of

[00:26:46] Mark Ritter: if you could wrap it up, and I know this will not be the first time you have spelled out your name. If anybody wants to connect with you on LinkedIn, if you could spell out your name and if they want to shoot you a message or [00:27:00] connect with Bellco, give out the website.

[00:27:14] Mark Ritter: Great. Alright, and what about at the Belco website? What is that?

[00:27:22] Mark Ritter: Alright, so joining me today was Amy scr of Belco Community Credit Union. I appreciate her time.

[00:27:44] Great to talk with you, mark. Have a great day.