FORT KENT (Jan. 8, 2018) – Acadia Federal Credit Union is pleased to announce an internal reorganization that better aligns its management team with the institution’s strategic plan, while placing a much greater emphasis on building relationships with staff, members, and the communities they serve.
This reorganization caps over a year of significant growth for Acadia FCU. The addition of thousands of new members after a 2017 merger with Eastern Maine Medical Center FCU, combined with continued growth throughout the institution and an expanding geographic footprint, caused Acadia FCU management to take a fresh look at their core management structure, plus how to improve day-to-day operations.
“We knew it was time to position ourselves to meet the changing demands of our credit union,” said David Desjardins, President / CEO of Acadia FCU. “The growth is exciting, but we need to manage that growth responsibly. In order for Acadia FCU to run efficiently and deliver the best service to our members, we need to be adequately-staffed, with the right people in the right positions, and make some enhancements to our departments and processes. Part of our approach included polling Acadia staff to find out what areas we needed to improve upon. Their feedback turned out to be the building blocks of our plan to restructure management and operations.”
Acadia staff and management recognized areas where institution-wide improvements were needed, including the need for more staff in certain departments; more training and ongoing coaching across all departments; empowering managers with the authority to make more decisions; and to streamline processes so training and procedures are the same, across all branches.
“With the dynamic growth that Acadia has and continues to experience, we outgrew the different positions’ structures,” said Acadia FCU Executive Vice President Luis Sanclemente. “We know that all the skills that got us here need to be continually developed and expanded upon in order to help us keep up with the great momentum we are building. This desire to continually improve our staff is at the heart of our drive to further develop our team.”
Acadia FCU’s restructuring will include the shifting of existing talent into new roles and the addition of new talent to both the management team and front lines. All existing managers will be staying on, some with shifting or expanding roles or title changes. Additional positions and changes to roles and departments approved by the board of directors are as follows: VP of Operations; VP of Compliance; VP of Lending; VP of Finance; Chief Relationship Officer; training manager; and support specialists.
Effective Jan. 1, Luis Sanclemente’s position changed from Vice President to Executive Vice President as he begins to oversee all the new VP-level positions.
Former accounting manager, Erica Albert, is now Acadia’s VP of Finance. In this newly-expanded role, she will direct all aspects of accounting operations and play a more strategic role in unifying all financial matters for the credit union.
Michele Martin, formerly Acadia’s loan manager, is now the VP of Lending. She will head all lending functions of the credit union, including commercial, consumer, real estate, indirect, and collections.
Acadia FCU’s new structure resulted from months of meetings and strategic planning sessions by management, feedback from staff, and approval by the board of directors. The restructuring will better position Acadia FCU for continually building and nurturing relationships with staff, members, and community.
Acadia began the search for candidates to fill some of the new positions in October of 2018 and the search is expected to continue throughout the first half of 2019. Implementation of new departments, processes, and shifting of duties will take place concurrently.
Glad to see this posted on Social Media. It’s important that members are kept aware of any and all changes that are happening with their financial institution. Great work by great talented people. Keep it up.