Todd Fortner
› Job: President and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union› Accomplishments: As head of Chattanooga’s biggest credit union, Fortner helped lead TVFCU to move into a new corporate headquarters downtown, expand its staff and loan programs and launch the first Idea Leap grant to aid local startup businesses.
President and CEO Todd Fortner poses at the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union administrative office downtown on Monday, May 7, 2018 in Chattanooga, Tenn.Over the past decade, the number of bank branches operating in metropolitan Chattanooga has dropped by more than 17 percent and most financial institutions have trimmed their staffs as more consumers have shifted to online options for routine financial transactions and new technologies have replaced many manual tasks.
But Chattanooga’s biggest credit union – the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union (TVFCU) – has continued to add to its staff and its brick-and-mortar footprint across its 13-county service territory. During 2018, TVFCU completed its move into its new corporate headquarters on Chestnut Street, nearly doubling the amount of administrative offices for the credit union from its former headquarters on Market Street.
Todd Fortner, a certified public accountant who joined TVFCU in 2005, has led the new initiatives as CEO of the credit union for the past three years.
“Especially for our area of the country, we think our members prefer to have the option of having a local branch or having someone they can sit down and talk with and offer personal service,” Fortner says. “Anytime, we open a new location, we see our volumes pick up in those locations, which tells you that many people want that service.”
At the same time, consumers want to be able to do more business on the web or telephone, which Fortner has pushed with more Interactive Teller Machines and a new centralized loan process that allows routine consumer loans to often be made via the web or phone. The new headquarters allows TVFCU to create a centralized lending team and to use remote tellers to service a growing network of over 40 Interactive Teller Machines, most of which are open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Fortner also is helping lead TVFCU to play a bigger role in growing Chattanooga’s startup business economy. The Idea Leap loan program started in 2017 to offer loans to more entrepreneurs launching new businesses was so successful that TVFCU took the program’s proceeds and awarded $50,000 of Idea Leap grants to 10 small businesses during Chattanooga’s Startup Week in October.
Overall, TVFCU grew its membership this year by 6 percent to more than 140,000 and expanded its mortgage lending volume 18 percent, primarily through new zero-money-down mortgages and different term loans of 12 and 14 years. The staff at TVFCU has grown by 8 percent to 361 employees.
“We’re not driven by profit here as a member-owned institution,” Fortner says. “We’re driven by purpose and that is something very appealing to our employees and our members.”