Winston-Salem-based Truliant Federal Credit Union has been on a growth tear in the recent year, causing it to pass $5 billion in assets, CEO Todd Hall says.
It reflects a 20% increase from the start of 2023, and is more than double from 2016, when the credit union reached $2 billion in assets. Truliant reported net income of $22.6 million during the first nine months of 2023, according to federal filings.
Truiliant has added or replaced about a half dozen new branches in central North Carolina since 2019, and opened two offices in the Greenville, South Carolina market over the past 13 months. A third Greenville-area office is slated to open in 2024.
Truliant had an “overwhelmingly positive response” to some certificate-of-deposit offers in the past year to attract savers seeking higher yields as interest rates rose, says spokesman Heath Combs.
“Over the last few years, we’ve diversified our income streams by adding services and expanding into new lines of business,” he adds. Unlike many credit unions, the company is an active small business lender, with about $630 million of commercial loans outstanding as of Sept. 30.
Truliant has also boosted its brand awareness by putting its name atop the former Winston Tower building in downtown Winston-Salem, which housed the headquarters of Wachovia Bank for many years. It also opened a large operation center this year near Hanes Mall in the Twin City.
The credit union is the seventh-largest financial institution based in North Carolina, ranked by annual revenue, according to Business North Carolina research. It has 944 full-time employees as of Sept. 30.
Truliant is a tenth the size of the biggest N.C. credit union, Raleigh-based State Employees’ Credit Union, which has about $50 billion in assets. SECU’s assets have declined by a few billion in the past year as it didn’t offer high rates to attract or retain dep
osits, compared with some of its peers.
Raleigh-based Coastal Credit Union has $4.9 billion in assets, spokesman Joe Mecca says.
Truliant dates to the mid-1950s when workers at the Western Electric plant in Winston-Salem formed a credit union. For many years it was known as AT&T Family Credit Union before changing to Truliant in 1998.
The credit union said this week that Linell Johnson will succeed Cosby Davis as chief financial officer on Jan. 1. Johnson has worked at the credit union since 1994.
