The Innovation Credit Union will be moving forward with plans to become a federal credit union after the strong majority of members approved of the special resolution.

A two-and-a-half-week voting period resulted in 82 per cent of members voting in favour of the shift to go federal. The Saskatchewan-based company required at least 75 per cent to continue with their federal application.

Dan Johnson, CEO of the Innovation Credit Union, said he's happy with the result of the vote along with the over 17,000 ballots cast.

"It's a huge element for our organization," he said. "To have that many of our members get engaged in the decision to go to the next step is very exciting for us. Typically we only get one to two per cent of our membership out to vote and in this case, it was well above 30 per cent."

The next step for Innovation is to have other Canadian regulatory bodies approve the credit union's application to become a federal credit union.

"Even though we have the support of our membership, we still have a lot of work ahead of us," Johnson explained. "That's something that we have to start working on in the New Year. We do need the support of our current regulatory body (Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation), provincial government and we will also seek support from our new regulatory body (Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions) and the federal government, that will take time."

Johnson did note that the process to move federally will take at least a year or two before being complete.

The shift federally would begin with a push to increase the number of digital memberships with no concrete plans to build any facilities outside of the province yet.