FAQ-page

Addition Financial Credit Union (AFCU) FAQ

• Is it acceptable to incorporate data obtained from UCF-provided resources, even if such data might include private information?

  In the interest of ensuring a level playing field, participants in this competition are permitted to utilize publicly available data sources, with the added clarification that participants may also access and utilize resources provided by UCF at no additional cost to students, even if these resources would typically incur fees for the general public.

• How specific is the location supposed to be? Is it enough to choose a city or zip code, or does it need to be an exact address?

  I apologize for the vague answer, but that’s really up to you. The reasoning and documentation behind why a specific location or area was chosen should support your decision.

• When Addition Financial Credit Union acquired Fidelity Bank of Florida back in 2019, were any of the branch locations other than the one in Merritt Island kept open?

  The Merritt Island branch was the only branch we retained from our Fidelity acquisition.

• Can you provide some additional details on the difference between the UCF Campus branch and the UCF Commons branch? Is the UCF Commons branch a physical location like the UCF Campus branch is?

  The UCF Campus branch is a physical location on the UCF Campus located in the John T. Washington center. The UCF Commons branch *was* a physical location across Alafaya Trail in the University Commons Plaza. We made the decision to close this branch in July 2021. We still have some data tied to this location so it was included in our dataset.

• Can Addition Financial open new branch locations in counties that currently have no branches?

  Currently, our branches are located in 6 counties, but our charter includes over 20 counties. The counties include Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Alachua, Brevard, Duval, Flagler, Hernando, Highlands, Hillsborough, Indian River, Manatee, Marion, Martin, Okeechobee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Sumter, and Volusia County. Also, we are not legally restricted to building within these 24 counties. We can build a branch anywhere we want, but in order for people to join, the people must be able to meet certain qualifications. These qualifications are related to Addition Financials field of membership which is based on a community charter. Specifically, anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or vocational training, or is an alum of any college, university, or educational institution in the aforementioned counties. Therefore, it only makes sense to build within our chartered counties. Regarding further expansions outside of the listed counties (if needed), we could always explore filing for an expansion with the Florida Office of Financial Regulation.

• In the member-level dataset, it seems as though the individual members are never associated with more than one branch. Is this due to the way the data was curated? I expected to see members using different branches over time, so I am a little confused by the data. For example, a given member is identified using their unique ID, and this affiliates the member with a single branch in the dataset. If there are populated values for this member in the ATMCount field, does that mean the customer only used the ATM at the branch he is associated with?

  These are independent data points.

  (i) The association of a member to a branch is simply denoting their home branch (where they most often conduct transactions.

  (ii) The transaction counts relate to transactions conducted anywhere, so yes it is possible members would have used multiple branches, it simply wasn’t feasible to create a dataset that showed every one of these transactions over this size time period.

• What exactly does the home banking field represent? Would you be able to provide an example of this type of transaction?

  “Home Banking” is using our online banking website for any transaction that does not flow through our “Billpay” service. This would be mostly internal/external transfers.

• What are open club accounts?

  Club accounts have the following definition:

  a. Is a nonprofit

  b. Is an officially recognized club, organization, or association and provides:

      i. A letter from the school, church, or parent organization explaining that the club, organization, or association is in good standing and is officially recognized as existing will be sufficient. A website for officially registered student organizations (RSO) will meet this requirement as well.

  c. Intends to maintain less than $5,000 in the account.

• If a branch facilitates an ACH transaction, does the credit union make money? In other words, assuming no nefarious activity has occurred, can this be considered a source of revenue for the credit union generally speaking?

  ACH transactions do not typically generate revenue*. Our primary sources of revenue are:

  a. Interest earned on loans/credit cards

  b. Interest earned on investments

      i. Yes, banks and credit unions invest some of the money deposited into their institution

  c. Interchange

      i. This is the fee we earn back from VISA. (Every time a debit card is swiped, VISA charges the merchant some percentage amount from that charge. A small amount of that charge is returned to the credit union bank that issued the debit card)

  d. Fees

      i. As a credit union, we try to make this a minimal amount for our members, but we do have some fees

  * Please note, credit unions and banks are legally allowed to charge members for ACH transactions, but I don’t know of any institution that does.

• Who is registered as the account holding member under the High School Branch Program? The minimum age for this group of members is 18, but aren’t some of them minors? It seems like these individuals are all essentially college aged.

  This one is a bit tricky to explain, but I’ll do my best.

  • For High school accounts the age range is 12-18 and we have a special code that flags these members as “high school”. When we open these types of accounts we place the students anticipated graduation date in our system and that special flag falls off after that graduation date passes. For the purpose of this competition, we have removed any members that still have that special flag in place… (those who are flagged as High School and are actually still in high school).

  • So, the group of records you are seeing are those members who previously were flagged as high school, they have graduated (which is why they are over 18), but they have not used any of our other branches enough times to trigger a branch change*, so we don’t know which branch to code them to. Therefore, they still remain coded to the High School branch (even though they can’t go on the school campus anymore, weird… I know).

  • *I mentioned a “branch change” above –> we have an automated job that will reassign a member to a new branch if that member starts using a new branch often (other than the one they are coded to). In the case of the members above, they either didn’t hit this threshold for a change or never used a different branch at all.  It’s up to you how you want to treat this group of members.

  • It’s up to you how you want to treat this group of members.

• Can you clarify what constitutes a Bill Payment? If a member pays their water bill using their bank account is that considered an ACH transaction or a Bill Payment? If a member has an open loan, would a monthly loan payment be accounted for under Bill Payment?

  Bill Payment is when the member uses our Online Banking system (internal) to pay a bill or send funds. ACH is when an outside source like the Cable company is requesting the funds to complete a bill payment. So here, The Cable companies bill pay method was used. An electronic request for fund was made vs being sent out by our system.

• Would you be able to provide the year that each branch was opened (excluding the branches in the High School Program)?

  • UCF Campus Branch – 1971

  • Weber – 1977 (Reconstruction in 2017 = Mills Branch)

  • Kissimmee Branch – 1982

  • Pine Hills Branch – 1982

  • Sanford Branch – 1984

  • Leesburg Branch – 1984

  • South Orlando Branch – 1985

  • Winter Garden Branch – 1989

  • East Orlando Branch – 1989

  • Apopka Branch – 1995

  • St. Cloud Branch – 1996

  • Altamonte Springs Branch – 2005

  • Metrowest Branch – 2006

  • Lake Mary Branch – 2007

  • Oviedo Branch – 2007

  • Fern Park Branch – 2008

  • Clermont Branch – 2009

  • CFE Arena Branch – 2013 (Closed 2020)

  • Orange City Branch – 2014

  • Lake Nona Branch – 2014

  • Longwood Branch – 2019

  • Merritt Island Branch – 2019

  • Poinciana Branch – 2019

  • Downtown Campus Branch – 2020

  • Eustis Branch – 2020

  • The Loop Branch – 2021