Prairie credit union technology services company Celero — owned jointly by credit union centrals from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta — has been sold to Montreal-based CGI Inc.
Calgary-based Celero, which has an office in Winnipeg, was formed 20 years ago, when Credit Union Central of Manitoba, Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan and Credit Union Central of Alberta pooled their back office operations to better leverage tech and expertise for their members.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed Thursday. CGI will acquire Celero’s services and business, which includes core banking, digital banking, managed services, integration and security.
About 150 of Celero’s current 200 employees will join the CGI team.
CGI is one of the world’s largest technology and business consulting firms, with $14.3 billion in revenue last year and a workforce of about 90,000 consultants and professionals.
Curtis Wennberg, CEO of Credit Union Central of Manitoba, said handing over management of critical IT infrastructure to a large multi-national is not a concern.
“When you think about the evolution of technology supporting banking systems and credit unions over time, we realized a long time ago we couldn’t do it independently,” he said. “This just makes sense now.
“CGI is a much larger company. The employees and customers of Celero will be in good hands with an entity that has a great track record with technology innovations.”
Neville Ashleigh, senior vice-president of CGI operations in Atlantic Canada, said: “We are probably Canada’s best-kept secret in this space. CGI has been delivering services and solutions to the financial services sector, including credit unions across Canada, for nearly 30 years.”
Prior to its acquisition of Celero, CGI was providing service to more than 100 credit unions, trusts and small banks in Canada, servicing more than two million members.
Celero had about $90 million in annual revenue.
While the three centrals were its owners, they did not derive any revenue from Celero. In fact, owing to the pace of technological change, the trio said it needed to invest more capital to remain up to date with tech change.
“CGI is already accustomed to working with credit unions in Canada … We understand the business, we understand the challenges and we recognize the opportunity to work with credit unions to help them become more efficient, to enable them to provide better and more competitive services to their member base,” Ashleigh said.
According to Wennberg, CGI has better connections to software vendors and can get better prices and terms and offer a broader range of options for its clients.
It will provide a range of services to the Prairie clients, including strategic advice, digital transformation, banking technology, cybersecurity, managed services and payment solutions.
In 2022, credit unions across the country were subject to a cybersecurity incident. Wennberg said a company like CGI is better equipped to deal with those sorts of critical events.
Martin Cash
Reporter
Martin Cash is a business reporter/columnist who’s been on that beat for the Free Press since 1989. He’s a graduate of the University of Toronto and studied journalism at Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University). Read more about Martin.
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