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History

Our Mission

Dedicated to the financial success of our members and the communities we serve.

Our Story

picture of chestnut street service center in 1952.Following the years after the Great Depression,  there was some trepidation with the
American financial system, so credit unions became a trusted local resource of workers
pooling their funds to help other coworkers.  In the early 1950’s, workers at the Grove City,
Pennsylvania factory of Cooper-Bessemer Company formed a credit union. By the summer of 1952, their Ohio counterparts heard how well the credit union was working in Pennsylvania, so several hundred factory workers at the Mount Vernon, Ohio factory started a grassroots movement to form a local credit union and circulated a petition. Their grassoots efforts paid off, and by September of that year, the Cooper-Bessemer Employees’ Credit Union was incorporated in the State of Ohio as a not-for-profit financial cooperative.

Those struggling factory workers pooled their financial resources to build their savings and to help their coworkers. The first loan was to help a factory employee buy coal to heat his home for the winter. After several years of volunteers staffing the credit union with a cigar box as the “vault” and operating in a small wooden building on Cooper-Bessemer grounds, the first building was built in 1962 nearby on Chestnut Street (pictured). That office is still thriving today.

By the mid-1970’s, Cooper-Bessemer changed their name to Cooper Energy Services, better known locally just as “CES. The credit union fittingly then changed their name to CES Credit Union. (The CES Credit Union has kept the CES name as tribute to our founding sponsor company. Even as the credit union grew to serve multiple communities and counties, the familiar letters of CES still has favorable name recognition in our market area.)

In 1982, CES Credit Union acquired two small credit union offices inside Flxible bus factories in nearby Delaware and Loudonville from a New York credit union. Those two offices continued to grow and eventually each moved into newly-constructed CES Credit Union service centers: 33 London Road in Delaware (opened in 2004) and 3030 State Route 3 South in Loudonville (opened in 2008).

In 1996, a new center (with corporate offices) opened at 1215 Yauger Road in Mount Vernon. Expansion continued with the Utica center  opening in November 2006 as we began serving all of Licking County. The Coshocton center opened at 700 South Second Street in November 2021, following the merger of Coshocton Federal Credit Union. 

Based on demand and a loyal following, the State of Ohio  allows CES Credit Union to offer financial services to all who live, work, worship or attend school in these eight Ohio counties: Ashland, Coshocton, Delaware, Holmes, Knox, Licking, Morrow and Richland.

The assets of CES Credit Union passed $200 million in 2021 and (as of late 2022) have grown to over $216 million. CES Credit Union employs around 60 people at six locations around Central, North Central and East Central Ohio.  Sandy Coffing serves as President and CEO.