At their April 4 Annual General Meeting, Innovation Credit Union announced their intention to become a federal credit union. 

The Credit Union, which recently celebrated its 10th birthday, will have a member vote in the fall to decide whether or not to continue the push towards going national. 

"We're right in the middle of our member outreach. our goal is to have a conversation with each and every one of our members who can vote, and that's over 40,000 members," Dan Johnson, CEO of Innovation Credit Union said. "We're just starting that process. We've already put in our pre-application to Ottawa, so they're looking at that and we're working w ith them on that information."

"Our main goal over the next few months as we move into the fall, we hope to have our special vote in the Fall, in November, but right now we're looking to reach out and talk with our members and answer any questions on the federal initiative," he said. 

Innovation will need 75% of its members to vote yes towards a federal initiative in order to move forward. Once that vote passes, more will be needed from outside the Credit Union in order to move ahead. 

"A big part of our short-term plan to have those conversations and have that positive vote. But even if we get that positive vote, we still have to get four more signatures," Johnson said. 

Innovation will have to get approval from the Federal Government, their new regulator, current regulator, and the Provincial Government. While the process is a lot of work, he says that Innovation just wants the opportunity to compete both inside their market and out. 

"Technology has kind of created an unlevel playing field. We have a lot of technology companies very interested in what we do as a financial services entity. They have the flexibility to come into our market and compete, we just want to have a level playing field so we can compete with them throughout the country," he said. "Just think about the current scenario even in Saskatchewan. Only three percent of the entire population live in Saskatchewan, so having access to the other 97 percent, and just taking a sliver of business from that is very compelling to us."