Federal regulators were key to Blue Federal’s bank purchase

LOVELAND — Elevations Credit Union, with headquarters in Boulder, had hoped to be the first credit union in Colorado to purchase a bank with its potential deal to buy assets of Cache Bank and Trust of Greeley.

But regulators got in the way, rejecting the deal. Instead, Blue Federal Credit Union, with headquarters in Cheyenne, Wyoming, will become the first to buy and convert banking customers in Colorado to credit-union members. 

As announced in recent days, Blue Federal will buy assets of two Colorado branches of Liberty Savings Bank — in Denver and Granby — and convert the customers to credit-union members. The deal is expected to close Feb. 21 and make Blue Federal into a $1.2 billion institution with 91,000 members. It has branches in Boulder, Broomfield, Fort Collins, Lafayette and Wellington in Colorado.

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Stephanie Teubner, president and CEO of Blue Federal, was quick to point out at a press gathering Thursday in Loveland that her credit union will be the first in Colorado and Wyoming to make a bank acquisition. And the reason it was able to accomplish the deal was because both Blue Federal and Liberty Savings Bank are federally chartered, not state-chartered like Elevations and Cache.

“We live by the federal charters, not state charters,” Teubner said. As a result, Blue Federal needed the approval of only the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the National Credit Union Administration. Elevations and Cache will need those approvals plus the sign-off of the Colorado Division of Financial Services and the Colorado Division of Banking. At the state level, the Colorado Bankers Association has influence, and it came out in opposition to the Elevations/Cache deal.

Elevations and Cache may appeal the decision but have not announced what they will do.

As for Blue Federal, “This took a tremendous amount of work over the course of a year to get accomplished,” Teubner said. 

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