David Ritter is a Managing Director at ALM First, who works with clients by focusing on both their quantitative and qualitative strategic growth initiatives; whether via facilitating an entire merger and acquisition process, conducting strategic planning, building customized sophisticated yet practical financial scenario analyses models for clients, or creating de novo business plans. David provides a multitude of advisory services to clients, including merger and acquisition guidance, business valuation and strategic planning. He has worked with credit unions, banks, mortgage companies and CUSOs to help build strategies and move quickly towards their financial goals. David also helps clients understand the true value of their business through a wide range of financial valuation services.
David Ritter is a Managing Director at ALM First, who works with clients by focusing on both their quantitative and qualitative strategic growth initiatives; whether via facilitating an entire merger and acquisition process, conducting strategic planning, building customized sophisticated yet practical financial scenario analyses models for clients, or creating de novo business plans. David provides a multitude of advisory services to clients, including merger and acquisition guidance, business valuation and strategic planning. He has worked with credit unions, banks, mortgage companies and CUSOs to help build strategies and move quickly towards their financial goals. David also helps clients understand the true value of their business through a wide range of financial valuation services.
Got to the merger agreement, went to exactly or went right to the CEO clause. And it didn't say who the, to CEO was. So I asked the two current ones, I said, who is the continuing CEO? Who's the president who is EVP, how's this going to work? They both raised their hands in terms of who was going to be the continuing CEO. Yeah. How do you think that went? So that is...
Mike Ensweiler:Welcome everyone to the 3rd episode of In Your Best Interest an ALM First Podcast. A show that will explore common depository challenges, give you an insider's view of the latest market trends, and share stories and insights from industry leaders. I'm your host, Mike Ensweiler, and this week's episode will focus on mergers, primarily in the credit union space, with David Ritter. David is a managing director at ALM First who works with clients by focusing on both their quantitative and qualitative strategic growth initiatives. Whether via facilitating an entire merger and acquisition process, conducting strategic planning, building customized, sophisticated, yet practical financial scenario analysis models for clients or creating Denovo business plans. We're talking about mergers because that has been the hot trend the last couple of years. Credit unions, merging banks, merging credit unions, buying banks, it's a continuous hot topic. The industry continues to shrink and it's something that we get asked about all the time. And with that, let's dive into mergers with David. David, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we get started, I know you're a Northern California guy you're living in Michigan. How does a Northern California guy get to Michigan?
David Ritter:That's the big question always. I grew up in Northern California and then I actually moved to Southern California to go to undergrad. I went to UC Santa Barbara, and then after UC Santa Barbara moved down to Southern California, got married in Laguna beach, lived in N ewport beach and w orked at American Savings Bank. We were acquired by Washington Mutual way back in the day and I headed up the post merger integration group. I really was very interested in the merger and acquisition space and so I decided I wanted to go to business school. I got accepted to Carnegie Mellon, got my MBA from Carnegie Mellon when I graduated, the dot bomb happened. I was at that point, just looking for a career, I was going to move back to California or New York. Of all places t hat w ere hiring at the time was Michigan, and ended up working with a great firm headed up my strategic advisory group and M&A group in Michigan. Had kids and I have built my roots here and been here ever since.
Mike Ensweiler:That's awesome. You know I had on the last podcast, I had Robert Perry on and like yourself, very quantitative, very bright, math is something that seems to come very easily for you and like Robert and a lot of people who are very good at math, you're also into music and rock bands. Tell us a little bit about that as well.
David Ritter:Yeah. As Spinal Tap says, I like to turn it up to 11, after a hard day. I'm a part of a rock band, I am the lead guitar. Actually the only guitarist in our band. We just play for charities, it's with a bunch of friends. We play covers Led Zepplin, Van Halen, Guns and Roses, those type of things. Other than my family my other loves are my Gibson Les Paul Standard and my Marshall Silver Jubilee. So it's something I love to do, that's my de-stressor.
Mike Ensweiler:Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about the path that led you to ALM First.
David Ritter:So as you mentioned, you know, how do I get to Michigan? Well, long story short, I worked with another firm. I built my career, strategic planning really focusing in on both the for profit and not for profit organizations. Mostly focused on financial institutions and really started to love the credit union mantra/mentality as well as the bank side. But back in 2009, when in the merger standpoint, credit unions that merged had to do a fair valuation. Well, I got to know ALM First, very intimately, with especially Kevin Kirksey. We were just trying to figure out, okay, how do you value a not-for-profit entity? This was new. So I got to know Kevin Kirksey, who is one of our lead executives at ALM First. And then next thing I met with Emily Hollis and just had a really good rapport with ALM First. And when we could not do a fair valuation on an organization, first organization I called was ALM First. We just had a really good rapport. I can say this because I've been with ALM First for less than a year. I've always considered ALM First a s the Goldman Sachs of the credit union space. And I got to know them more and more, and it just seemed to be a really good fit. Instead of just our valuation s ide is let's offer an entire start to finish M&A advisory service. And one person that I started working with more and more was Brandon Pelletier that works at A LM First, and now as part of our team in the M&A space. And it's been kind of the best of both... all worlds. I'm extremely delighted that I've been able to move over there and help the organization grow and add one more service to ALM First.
Mike Ensweiler:Yeah and I know we're very excited to have you that really rounds out that service offering for us, especially you've been in this space for 14, 15 years. And so as you mentioned, ALM First has been in the valuation side of that since 2009 along with your help there, but to really offer our clients, you know, kind of that soup to nuts, turnkey M&A, or merger service is something that is really exciting for the firm. You know, I was just seeing recently that, you know, the bank deals or transactions have really dropped significantly this past quarter. And so, you know, the obvious question I have for you is that COVID related or what's driving that and is that impacting credit unions as well?
David Ritter:Yes, predominantly it's COVID related, and we were actually helping a couple of organizations, actually credit unions looking to acquire a bank and everyone got skittish because well, first and foremost, they had to look at their own operations and make sure that they could serve their customers, their members without looking at strategic opportunities. So the bank space has really dropped significantly. However, what I'm finding as it's not being just truly opportunistic, but it's being, um, open the eyes. It's the tipping point for credit unions that might've been on the sidelines for awhile, is that, you know what, there's probably some opportunities out there. And it probably makes sense from scale. We hear scale, scale scale all the time. So I'm getting calls from credit unions that would like to at least put the hat in the ring. How do I do this? How do I start this process? How do I entertain talking to other organizations that whether they have to do something or let's come together and work collaboratively to serve our members, to retain our talent, our employees and to just be good stewards in our communities that we serve. So the credit union space, I find that there's a lot more, it's been a tipping point. There's a lot more discussion happening. The banking space I think we're going to see this be slow for quite some time.
Mike Ensweiler:What about on the credit union buying bank side? That seems to be a kind of a big headline in the industry publications, both on the banking side and the credit union side for the past couple of years.
David Ritter:Yeah. I think, Well, what's happened is most of the banks have gotten skittish. They don't want it. The multiples have dropped so much that the shareholders don't want to sell at a discount compared to what we saw pre-COVID. When you're seeing a price to tangible book value as some pretty good, strong, strong. Now we're seeing it's just dried up, it's because there's some, there's just unknown. We don't know what's going to happen to the portfolio. Do we want to acquire something that we just don't know about even through due diligence when we don't even know our own organization? So remember, when we're looking to buy a bank, we're actually cutting a check. And credit unions... There's a merger. There's no cutting a check between two organizations. We're bringing the capital together. So that's why there's skittishness on the acquiring a bank holistically versus two credit unions coming together from a merger. However, I do see there's going to probably be more opportunities for credit unions to look at bank and branch opportunities. That COVID is sort of been again, I'll use that, that tipping point or ripping the bandaid off quickly. Where do we need all the physical branches that we've been having to serve our members, serve our customers? Some people are assessing that, but there might be an opportunity for credit unions to buy bank branches that fit in their core needs at a discount. So stay tuned for that. I think there might be some opportunities for that coming down there, down the path.
Speaker 3:We touched on briefly a slow down with COVID. But one of the things that I hear from institutions a lot is that they're flushed with liquidity. Either loan demand is dried up or they're, you know, they just, they need to put this money to work. Margins are being compressed costs are going up, all of that. And so do you anticipate, you know, going forward that we're gonna see increased volume of M&A deals or mergers or organizations just going away?
David Ritter:Well, that's a great point. I'll call it a war chest. Remember in credit union land, there's no cash being transacted, but there's still capital. So a fair valuation of a merging entity is the norm. What we're seeing is some capital ratios have increased and in some cases, which enables us to maybe delve deeper into an organization may have 7% capital, 8% capital and have a little bit of a leeway. So I think that you're going to see is... it's kind of a unique way of looking at it cause there is no cash being transacted. But sort of a war chest for credit unions to maybe drop a little bit more into the risk side of things, where the capital is not perfectly stellar for looking at other opportunities of other credit unions. So I still see that there's going to be more opportunities across the board. Like I said, clients are talking to us constantly about this and they're opening their risk tolerance in terms of capital.
Mike Ensweiler:Do you see, you know, we had the economic crisis now that's, I don't know, 10, 12 years behind us, but the institutions that survived and maybe weren't as healthy as they once were, but they survived. Do you see them going away this round with this new kind of economic slowdown, unemployment up, the current environment that we're in? Because it's clearly different than it was five years ago.
David Ritter:Yeah, and unfortunately, well, fortunately, and unfortunately this isn't something that one organization did something bad or another did bad, it's us, we're all in this together. So some of those that have built the capital base and maybe had a really strong lending portfolio, have a little bit more loan to share ratio or a little bit more liquidity, I should say. So maybe some of the smaller ones that did not have the technology platforms to serve their membership during COVID, it maybe didn't even have a drive through for the members to go through a branch and just had kind of the old school ways of just going into a branch and weren't able to serve their members. I think that's going to be where the downfall is, where organizations are going to need to take a look at a collaboration with another organization that has capital to help with the technology side of things. It's just really has been such a focus on technology technology technology. I always joke about that members, especially the millennials and the Gen Z's, their field of membership it's they live, work and worship on their phones. Well, this is just that catalyst to force us to go down that direction more and it's costly. Scale means everything and those organizations that have the scale right now, I think are the ones that are going to get get through this less impaired.
Mike Ensweiler:So technology being a driver, scale clearly being a driver, you hear that a lot. I got to believe in this environment, compliance costs are also pretty significant, especially for institutions that aren't as profitable as others. Are there any other drivers for institutions to look at M&A or mergers or heading down this path?
David Ritter:Yeah, I always look at this bigger does not necessarily mean better; however, quantitatively we see this over and over again. You know, it used to be the race to$100 million, race to 500$million. We hear over and over again it's a race to a billion. However, our clients that are over a billion, they said we just need to continue growing. It's a consolidated industry. We keep seeing the numbers, you know, 4% or 5% per year, collapsing or shrinkage of the industry. We have less credit unions able to serve more members. So it makes you think, okay we have less credit unions able to serve more members. What are we doing here? Well, scale. Scale scale scale. We're able to provide as we grow normally better pricing in terms of better loan rates and on share rate side. So our margins might start to collapse a bit as being a larger organization, but it's because we have the efficiency as a large organization. In tandem, we're able to provide our employees more compensation, more career pathing. As I say, With our transactions often, that is one of the key drivers. Is retaining& obtaining talent, meaning employees. Uh, so technology, employees, uh, retaining& obtaining talent. I'd also say that right now, still looking at call reports from Q1 and Q2 will be out soon, is that it's a proactive way for organizations that have been doing well to at least stay sustainable, relevant, and keep some of their history behind it, as opposed to a reactionary way. And so I'm finding more and more, the creditors are reaching out saying, hey, you know what, we want to go into this with some strength into an organization or into a transaction. So those are the things that I'm seeing as being a, kind of the catalyst for depositories to look down at this, at this opportunity.
Mike Ensweiler:So let's talk a little bit about, okay, I have those drivers, I have a need for scale, or I've got excess capital and I, I want to scale up. Whether I'm looking to acquire or be acquired what are the top three to five things that banks or credit unions looking at M&A's should be thinking about.
David Ritter:So when you're looking though, thinking about mergers, what I find is you do your normal, strategic planning. I call it Q3-Q4, is the season of strategic planning and it's organic strategic planning. Well, how can I leverage a merger to maybe get there faster, to achieve my strategic goals, my strategic vision? Is it that we're going to open up a new branch in an area because our members are starting to grow into that general area? Have I exhausted credit unions that might have a branch of that area? It's nice that there are, we already have a brand. We have people that know the industry, or know the geography there. So maybe that's a way you can go into the, to capitalize on your strategic plan. I'll give you a story. I worked with two credit unions. One was about$700 million in assets. Actually$600 million assets and they wanted to be a billion in assets in five years with 9% capital. What we started looking at mergers as an opportunity for growth and they did a merger with an organization that was$350 in assets. Well, at the end, when they merged together and natural growth, after they merged, they became a billion in assets in one year with 13% capital. That's powerful and think this, the combined membership, 40% of the combined membership at that point had a branch closer to them. Talk about a value proposition. So the one organization exceeded their goal, their five year goals in one year. Yes. That's a lot of work, but it makes a lot of sense. So other things to consider about, especially in the credit union mergers, is accretive. Yes, that's kind of a weird way to think of a credit union merger, cause there's no shares, but how is it accretive to our stakeholders? So always thinking in terms of member value. What are members looking for? Better distribution channels, convenience. So we have both physical and technological. Scale's one of them. They're also looking for pricing, better pricing, more products and services, and familiarity. So one of the key things I always hear about is that, as I mentioned earlier, is a members want to make sure that the employees are taken care of in a merger. Those are the things that members are looking for. And last but not least, which is definitely not least, is remaining relevant in your communities and having retained board seats in a combined organization that represents the combined membership.
Mike Ensweiler:So we've talked a little bit about what drives the need for depositories to go down this path, the top three to five things that they should be looking at. So now the natural question that I have in my mind is when is the best time to do a transaction?
David Ritter:Well, let's take that back a little bit. When should I start to explore a transaction and I'd say you should always be exploring a transaction as part of your normal strategy. So as you as a leader of an organization, yeah, we're always looking at organic strategies, but strategy 101 is looking at opportunities for growth with others. So especially in the credit union space, it takes time. There's no cash being transacted between two organizations, it's all relationship built. So to put your hat in the ring, you really need to start now and just start to uncover, what are we willing to do? What are we good at? What could we do better at? How can we help another organization? How can they help us? Start to come, go down the path with your board of directors and your executive team on what our deal points, what are our negotiating points? How can we throw our hat in the ring and how can we start to explore building a relationship with another organization? I just recently heard that in the next, uh, I believe it was four years, 25% of executives are going to, um, there's going to be turnover. So there's opportunity for new leadership to come in, but also maybe there's some, some tired folks out there that say, hey, let's just combine two organizations together. Well, that takes some time to build that relationship up. So I'd start now go through a strategic planning, how we would want to reach out to another organization. The key thing here is if you're going to do this, you have to have a written document. So having an approved search profile, negotiating point early in the process, so that as you, as a leader, maybe the CEO, you know, what your range of negotiating points are because as a leader, you should always be talking to others and just keeping your ears out for opportunities.
Mike Ensweiler:So now, David, you know, I'm a CEO of an institution. I decide, I want to go down this path. What are the key risk areas in an M&A transaction?
David Ritter:First and foremost, and every time we have a successful merger the two organizations come back to me and they say, it's good thing we got rid of our egos. It's ego. That is by far in the credit union space the biggest risk. Leave the egos at the door, look at this in terms of the best thing for the members. First and foremost. Second, the employees, last is the community/ the board of directors. Once you can get rid of that ego things will propel much better and you're actually looking, as a board of directors, you're looking at the best thing for the combined organization. Let me give you a story. I had a credit union that was about double the size of another. They were doing a merger, the bigger organization, the board of directors thought, okay, you know we're the bigger organization you should merge into us. All of these different things. Well, it was interesting. The bigger organization had a different business model. They were doing fantastic, but they had more of a marketing focus. So their operating expenses were much higher. So just in a weird way of doing valuation in credit union land, it made their value less. So it actually made more sense for the bigger organization to merge into the smaller one. You know, granted, they were both state chartered, so there was no issue with a fed vs. state, but there was a bit of an ego kind of deflation for the larger organization. Oh, we failed. We've not done as well as we should have. No. Get that out of your mind. It was purely a quantitative decision. So they realized that, okay, we got to leave the egos at the door. The big organization merged into the smaller one, the bigger organization actually retained a name, but you know what, who knew that the bigger one merged into the smaller one? No one. It was the board of directors because yeah, the members of the big organization, they voted, but we're merging with XYZ organization. So it's the ego. Ego, ego, ego. Couple other things, as I mentioned earlier, is you have to have a written document of what we approved going forward in terms of the negotiation. So that you don't waste your time, effort and money. Ask the hard questions early. That's, I think where we at provide a huge amount of values, because we do ask those hard questions. We don't want to waste your time, effort, money, and let me give you a story. I was doing post-merger integration, and this was many, many, many years ago. We were not helping out in terms of the structure or anything. We didn't bring the two together. We just ultimately came in to help do the post merger integration. So we're building up these teams, the plastics teams, finance team, operations, you name it. Two days into it, you know that they were working this early, the two CEOs, it hadn't merged yet. They were, uh, I was getting mixed signals between the two CEOs. And so I said, Hey, can I look at your merger agreement? So it got to the merger agreement went right to the CEO clause. And it didn't say who the continued CEO was. So I asked the two current ones, I said, who is the continuing CEO? Who's the president, who is the EVP, how's this going to work? They both raised their hands in terms of who was going to be the continuing CEO. How do you think that went? So that is not what we worked on. We would have asked the hard question earlier, but guess what happened? It fell apart. They wasted nine months of time, effort, and energy by kicking the can down the road, thinking it was going to solve itself. So don't go down that path, ask the hard questions early. It may not feel comfortable, but you're going to save a lot of time, effort, and money.
Mike Ensweiler:So I make the decision. I understand what the kind of the risk areas are. You know, I know things I should be thinking about. I decided to move forward. I've got a partner lined up. What are the resources that are needed to execute or complete a transaction?
:Yeah. Let me give you kind of a holistic list of ones that I would suggest you don't have to have all of them, but there's reasons why I'm going to give you this list. Obviously a trusted advisor a M& A advisor that knows the process that has both the strategic side of things and the quantitative side of things that can help you navigate through the merger process and ultimately let you focus on your day to day activities. You've got a business to run. So let a trusted advisor help you out. The other is a very good astute attorney. Someone that has deal experience. That's key. Deal experience. Someone that can help you out in terms of not only writing the contracts, like the merger agreement, employment contracts, but someone that can help with the governance items. Sometimes boards are going to be working on the bylaws, t he combined bylaws. How do we want to work through that? An attorney that actually will roll up their sleeves and help in terms that perspective. A communications professional. I've started using a communications professional in the last few years and I think that's one of the best things that the money can buy outside of the, an attorney and a n advisor. This is what's going to help the executive team and the board sleep at night. Some of i t has a process that's going to leverage the two internal o rganizations, marketing communications teams, but it's already planned ahead. What are the questions going to be asked? How is the PR going to happen? How do we go through this entire process? I'll tell you, I can't say enough about that. Next would be someone that's in maybe the member vote. So remember the merging entities members vote. An organization that can tabulate both mail and electronic means, as well as at a special meeting. So the members of the merging entities vote for the transaction. So an organization that can help tabulate that, I always recommend a third party perception. I always say p erceptions, 90% of reality. If you have a third party, that's g oing t o tabulate that the better, because it just doesn't have a perception t hat something's unique happening in the background. A good strong accounting firm, and usually that's g oing t o be your organization's accounting firm and it's going to help with due diligence. The ones that actually can roll up their sleeves, look at things like an unfunded pension liability or something like that t hat can help out in terms of the due diligence aspects. And last but not least is sometimes it's g oing t o go down to a point where it's the talent a dvisor who maybe does an interview helping with the org chart. How does a billion dollar organization look like compared to a$500 million organization? And how do we do an interview so that the board can maybe make a decision on who should lead our combined organization? That's not always not always needed, but it's something to consider.
Mike Ensweiler:One of the things you touched on a little earlier than I'd like to have you expand upon is what is the board's role in a transaction?
David Ritter:That's a great, great question. It's really at the end of the day, stewards of the members. They got to constantly think that. Remember I talked about ego. Ego, we have boards of directors that put the life, blood, sweat, and energy into an organization and I thank them to the bottom of my heart. We have, I'd say 99, 98% of board members are, uh, do this out of the kindness of the heart. But it's really just being a steward for the members. They need to make sure that they give enough leeway to the executives to run the process, but constantly communicating back to the boards. And I always say the ideal time is at the board meetings. So let me give a little bit idea of the initial process. What we normally see is two CEOs getting together to have a dialogue, it's their livelihood. They gotta make sure they feel comfortable with across the table. Start to vet the process. Could we work together? How's our cultures work together? Once we feel comfortable between the two CEOs, you bring the board of directors in. I'll call it that we were going to have a, uh, a merger team that represents the board. So it's usually one or two board or directors, along with the CEO that starts to develop a rapport with the other side, start to build out a letter of intent, um, et cetera, and starts to develop that letter of intent over time, and gives back feedback to the rest of the board of directors. But really it's governance. Making sure that we're doing best for our members, making sure we're doing best for our employees, and the communities that we serve. So that's really the role from a purely a governance standpoint is the boards role.
Mike Ensweiler:Makes sense. It makes perfect sense to me. So, you know, one thing we haven't touched on, I'd love to have you expand on a little bit, what are the key phases of a transaction?
David Ritter:We like to break our, uh, the phases down into five major points. It's preparation, then what I would call initiation, structuring, and then transaction analysis. Then it's more regulatory, more definitive agreements, and then I'll call it closing and integration. I'll just highlight some of the things here. Preparation is ultimately what's going on in the market space. You know, we as a board of directors, executive team have to understand why is this continuing to happen? Some of the things that we talked about today. But it's coming up with our search profile. Having a written document, and then coming up with those credit unions that we think makes sense, based on our collaborative deal structure our search mandate. It's preparation coming up with our roadmap. We do a stringent strategy plan every year. Why would we not do that for a merger? We should have that at least in place. Once we put that together, it's the initiation instruction. That's really, now we have a roadmap. What are we willing to negotiate? It's going out and starting to have discussions with other organizations. And we, at ALM First as an advisor, that's when we contact the specific targets and start to ask them, would you be willing to explore an opportunity with another organization? We have not made any decisions at this point. We've got to feel that we are covering ourselves. That we're just having a dialogue. If this gets out in the marketplace, people are getting nervous. We haven't come up with any decisions yet. So starting to go through that process, the structure, what could this look like, all those things I talked about. So coming up with what I'll call is the letter of intent and then initial value proposition. We've got to understand how does this make sense for our members, our employees, our communities, and our board of directors. Once we come up with a letter of intent and note that this is a non-biding document, but it says that we're going to go spend time, effort, money to go to the next phase, which is transaction analysis. This is more of the quantitative area. This is where your CPAs come in, but also you're going to leverage internal expertise, your lending professionals that might go in and pull some loan files and see how the loans are underwritten. Then doing a projection, financial projections of the combined entity. Ultimately, this is strategy. We're finding more and more, especially on sizable transactions, that the regulators are coming back and asking for a combined ALM to make sure the riskiness to the, the transaction. So that's something to be put into place. Once we feel comfortable, the value proposition from a quantitative perspective, and then a value proposition for qualitative is put together because that's going to ultimately go to the regulators. We are then go to the next phase, which is definitive agreements and regulatory approval. At this point, this goes to the regulators. We are going to have a regulatory merger packet. This is the reasons why we think this makes sense for our members, our employees, our communities, our board, et cetera. This is the structure. And there's some other items in here, but this is all based on our findings. Once this goes through the regulators, and approve this, we then go to a member vote. Remember the merging entities members vote, and we can then become legally one. That does not mean more around the same core system at that point in time. The core system, what we're finding is depending on which one you're going to go onto, that could be 9, 12, 18, maybe even 2 years out into the future. So you got to have a plan of attack of how you're going to serve the combined members in the meantime, until you're on one core system. And with that throughout this entire process there has gotta be a communication planning and execution that goes hand in hand with this. As I talked to you about earlier with some of the key advisors, is to help you with that communication plan of how do we get this out internally, externally, and so forth.
Mike Ensweiler:Wow. Theirs clearly a lot to this process, David. You know, I know we're budding up against time, so, you know, maybe, are there any closing thoughts that you want to share?
David Ritter:Well, thank you, first of all, Mike, for your time. I just find that this is a really exciting industry to be in. I think we, as a credit union industry, don't get the word out enough to the industry of how good we are to our customers, our members, our stakeholders, our shareholders. It's great for the members. Employees love to work at credit unions, helping out the communities at large. It is becoming much more competitive and we've done that to ourselves in many cases that we've become more community based, but if you can find an opportunity with a like-minded credit union coming together makes it a lot easier collaboratively than competing against each other for the same members and not having the economies of scale there. So the key takeaway is if you're going to go through this at least come up with a written strategy plan so that you can put your hat in the ring intelligently.
Mike Ensweiler:You know, this has been very enlightening, David, you know, I've heard you speak about this quite a bit in the past, and every time I hear you talk your passion comes through. I learn something every time. Thank you so much for joining us today.
David Ritter:Thank you, Mike.
Mike Ensweiler:Thank you, David, for taking time to talk through mergers with us at the end of each episode, I'd like to take a moment to let you know about things that are coming up because M&A is such a big topic in the industry. We have a whole library full of resources for you from articles to recorded webinars. And David is continuously doing new webinars. So please visit almfirst.com to find out more. You can check in our resource center, or you can email us at podcast@almfirst.com. As always, stay safe, stay healthy, and thank you for listening to In Your Best Interest: An ALM First Podcast.
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