From Your CEO: SESLOC Answers to You — Spring 2025

Welcome to Spring! It’s been a busy quarter behind the scenes as we continue to work for you, our member-owners, and our Central Coast community.

Credit unions play a critical role in ensuring a level playing field so that everyone can achieve their financial goals. While SESLOC has served our community with trustworthy financial products since 1942 — powered by our cooperative spirit of people helping people — it is important to know that the credit union movement dates back over 110 years! Today, over 140 million people nationwide turn to credit unions for fair access to share savings, checking accounts, lower-interest loans, and wealth management services.

Because we’re headquartered on Broad Street, not Wall Street, and because we are a cooperative owned by the membership, SESLOC answers to you. We offer products and services which serve the greater good: for the community, by the community. We provide returns to you every day through investment in our local economies, technology and ease of access to your accounts, competitive dividend and loan rates and decisions made locally by people who want to help you, and the community, thrive.

To ensure we can continue that mission, several SESLOC leaders attended the Governmental Affairs Conference in March, organized by America’s Credit Unions. During the week, we met with lawmakers and regulators in Washington, D.C. to remind them of the credit union difference. We reinforced that we are here for our members, we have never created any financial system threats, and we have never needed a government bailout! Our message was clear: even those who aren’t a member of SESLOC will benefit from competitive interest rates and fair access to banking products by having the choice of credit unions in the community.

Everyone in our community benefits from our dedication to giving back, and we recently reached two milestones in a couple of our programs. Since beginning the Education Grant program in 2013, SESLOC has awarded a total of $200,000 to local K-12 schools in our community. Each month, we award grants in amounts up to $500 to supplement classroom budgets which enhance lesson plans with new equipment that goes beyond a school’s own budget. In addition, we topped $50,000 in prizes given back to our member-owners since the introduction of our Save to Win 12-month share certificate, including one winner of the $5,000 grand prize.

Your continued loyalty to SESLOC is behind all of our success. Thanks to you, we earned the “Most Reliable Staff” award from MemberXP, given to only the top performing credit unions in the nation, demonstrating that everything we do is geared towards helping you create the best relationship with your finances.

We also know that ease of doing business with SESLOC is very important and we have opportunities to improve. Our team is currently working to reduce friction points in all new membership, new account and new loan application processes whether you are in-branch, on the phone or online. Because we value your time and your membership, I truly hope you find these upcoming changes to be a strong indicator of how much we want to help you along your financial journey.

Please don’t be shy in letting us know how we can serve you better, and we can’t wait to see you at the many fun community activities around the central coast this spring. And as always, thank you for being one of the 55,000-strong member-owners of SESLOC Credit Union.