CEO Message for 2024

Dear Members,

On behalf of our Board of Directors, Supervisory Committee, Management, and Staff, it gives me great pleasure to once again present this year’s CEO message and share the amazing successes that our Credit Union experienced in 2023. My name is Mike Tufegdzich and I am the CEO of Water and Power Community Credit Union.  This is my second year in this leadership role and my 30^th year with this great cooperative.    

I am happy to announce that the credit union remains strong and was profitable in 2023 despite some very challenging economic pressures. We ended the year with a Net Income of $5.4 million, which is one of our highest in recent history.  We also significantly improved our Net Worth ratio to 8.95%, which is also a historic high. In addition, we continued to focus on expanding our partnership with the LADWP by increasing our membership penetration rate by 10%. We are very proud to have LADWP as our core sponsor and we look forward to working with them to help improve the financial lives of their employees and the communities we serve.        

In addition to our strong financial performance in 2023, we reimagined our entire strategic planning process last year to focus on the most impactful projects aimed at creating enhanced workflows, operational efficiencies, and improved technology. This would include partnering with industry leading organizations to expand our credit card product line, improve our mortgage servicing capabilities, and enhancing our home-banking platform to include more self-service tools for added convenience and better fraud prevention. We also invested into new IT infrastructure; leveraging technology and increasing our resources dedicated to keeping your information and our systems safe and available. 

Additionally, we developed a comprehensive member survey system to ensure that our member’s feedback is objectively evaluated in order to improve service levels across all delivery channels. Member access to the credit union was also a major goal as we expanded service through our Contact Center, Virtual Branch, and Northridge Branch to include Saturday coverage.  We also modernized our digital experience by incorporating AI-Powered chat service technology. 

For next year, we will continue to provide our employees a great place to work so they can better serve our members. We will do this by giving them the tools and training they need to succeed in their roles, applying the newest technologies, and removing all obstacles that get in the way of them providing the best and most personalized service to LADWP members, their families, and all the communities we serve.

In closing, I want to thank you for your support and loyalty during these challenging times and wish you a healthy, safe, and prosperous 2024. Our goal is to make this credit union a great place to work for our employees and a great place to bank for our members.  If you have any questions, need more information, or have any suggestion on how we can better serve your financial needs, please feel free to reach out to me.

Member feedback is always appreciated.  

Sincerely,

Mike Tufegdzich

President/CEO