July 2025 | Amy Keller
PenAir Credit Union got its start in 1936 with its first branch tucked in the back of a building at Pensacola Air Station, where it served members of the armed forces and contractors working on the base.
Nearly 90 years later, Pensacola’s largest credit union has more than 130,000 members and more than $3 billion in assets — and it’s expanding into neighboring states while embracing efficiencies that its CEO says benefit customers and PenAir’s bottom line.
Those efficiencies include 1,200-sq.-ft. streamlined branches with no tellers. Customers who need to do simple cash transactions instead use Interactive Teller Machines, or ITMs, which are similar to ATMs, but provide face-to-face interaction with a remote teller assisting over a video feed.
The remote tellers can service three branches simultaneously and “can pretty much do 100% of what a live teller can do,” says PenAir President and CEO Delbert Lee Morgan. “They’re a live person, they’re just … in another facility.” Branches utilizing ITMs, meanwhile, can operate with just three employees on site who focus on “white glove services,” such as processing loan requests or IRA transactions. And because the branches are smaller, “we build them faster,” Morgan says. Groundbreaking to ribbon cutting takes only six months.
That’s good news for a credit union that’s been expanding at a fast clip.
Two years ago, PenAir moved northward to Mobile County in Alabama and last year expanded membership eligibility to residents of Escambia County and Houston County, giving the credit union a presence in 19 Alabama counties. A May merger with Star City Federal Credit Union in Roanoke, Va., stretched PenAir’s footprint farther north, and Morgan hints that other mergers could be in store for the future. “We have a bunch of others we’re talking to,” he says.
Here in the Sunshine State, PenAir is doing what Morgan called “the slower creep.” The credit union has a 2,500-sq.-ft. branch going up in north Crestview and it’s planning to build facilities on land recently purchased off the Eglin Parkway in Fort Walton and in Panama City Beach.
It’s not just growth for growth’s sake. Geographic diversity is critical, Morgan says, for a region that’s so prone to hurricanes.
“If a hurricane hits Santa Rosa and Escambia and 80% of my members are right there … that can be overwhelming to us as an institution to have to work through those major hurdles. If I can take our memberships and spread it out, and even to other states, to Georgia and Alabama, when a hurricane hits, it won’t hit 75-80% of the credit union’s membership, but maybe 40-50%,” he explains.
While younger customers don’t necessarily utilize brick-andmortar branches, they still want them around, says PenAir Credit Union CEO Delbert Lee Morgan.
That said, PenAir is prepared to weather storms with two large trailers containing four ATMs that it can deploy to impacted regions. “We have our own cash management system. We have people with armored vehicles, bulletproof vests and guns who deliver our cash. We don’t have to wait for an outside company to come,” Morgan says. “We bring our own cash to the game.”
As for his next expansion targets, Morgan is planning for PenAir to expand eastward into Jacksonville, south toward Gainesville and eventually into the Orlando region. Outside of Florida, PenAir is eying continued expansion into Alabama and Georgia and is “looking at states even farther north than that,” he says. Meanwhile, as Michigan credit unions are scooping up banks in Florida (see “Snapped Up,” p. 12), he suggests that Florida credit unions might be wise to follow Michigan snowbirds back home and set up shop in Wolverine country.
It’s a grow or get left behind philosophy, Morgan explains. “Florida is a huge market, and when anyone asks how many more institutions we need, I always say, ‘one more.’ It makes us better. If I can’t compete with a new institution coming into the market, that’s on me, that’s not on them. If they move in too much into our market, I’m going to move into their market.”