Florida CU Regulator Approves Florida CU's Acquisition of Georgia Bank

The Florida Office of Financial Regulation on December 23 approved the application of First Commerce Credit Union (Tallahassee, FL) to purchase certain assets and assume certain liabilities of The Citizens Bank (Nashville, GA).

First Commerce will purchase approximately $193 million in assets and assume approximately $186 million in liabilities.

Both the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation approved First Commerce's request to expand its field of membership in relation to the proposed transaction.

The expanded field of membership includes people who live in the following GA counties of Atkinson, Berrien, Clinch, Colquitt, Cook, Lanier, and Tift (subject to an aggregate maximum of 5,500 new members per calendar year based on this expansion). AND all then-current customers of The Citizens Bank, as of the date of the successful purchase by the credit union.

At closing all customers of The Citizens Bank will temporarily become members of First Commerce. However with six months after the transaction being consummated, all depositors and borrowers of The Citizens Bank will have: (1) opted-in to become a member of the credit union; (2) not opted-in but will maintain a non-member deposit account with the credit union; or (3) not opted-in and their account relationship has been closed, paid off, or moved to another institution.

The purchase and assumption agreement still requires the authorization of the National Credit Union Administration and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.