‘People helping people’ across North Central Wisconsin

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

June 9, 2025

STEVENS POINT – Simplicity Credit Union President and CEO Nick Faber said excitement is rising as he and his employees prepare to move into the financial institution’s newest location in Stevens Point.

Faber said Simplicity’s forthcoming branch – set for completion this fall, according to simplicity.coop – will be the newest addition to the Portage County Business Park.

The credit union, he said, began exploring the idea of a new location a few years ago after leadership discovered its growth demanded it.

“We’d actually had two different buildings, one was on Post Road (in the Plover area), which we closed and sold in 2024,” he said. “As we were looking at moving people over to (our) Hoover (Road location in Stevens Point, we realized) it was too small for our team.”

From that realization, Faber said, a plan began to form.

“It’s been a little while now that we’ve been looking at trying to plan this out,” he said. “It was, I would say, late 2023, early 2024 when we identified the location that we will be moving into.”

Now, Faber said he and his team eagerly await the new building’s completion following a groundbreaking ceremony in March.

The business park

When deciding where Simplicity would build its new facility, Faber said the Portage County Business Park won out against his other options for several reasons – one being its accessibility.

“Public transportation was a big piece of (the decision making),” he said. “There’s a bus stop across the street that has a couple of different main routes (running) there.”

Furthermore, Faber said the business park made even more sense for Simplicity because of its proximity and connection to the business community.

“Some of the partners that we have in that area, the Portage County Business Council being one of them, (are) around the corner,” he said. “We also have Delta Dental and Skyward – two of our original founding members – over in the Stevens Point area. So, with those two (partners), it’s an area that made sense for us. There’s a lot of growth also going on over there.”

Simplicity’s previous Post Road location in Plover, Faber said, had been a full-service branch before niching down to “mainly a mortgage center.”

Bringing those employees up and into what will soon be Simplicity’s new Stevens Point location, he said, will help the credit union establish both a new, full-service branch and a central location for its corporate operations.

“The convenience of having all operations in a single branch was really the goal when we started all of this,” Faber said. “Now, we have a branch that will be able to do that, (and) it’ll fit our entire team in there, too.”

Necessary growth

Compared to Simplicity’s soon-to-close Hoover Road branch – which sits at roughly 6,000 square feet – Faber said the new branch will be almost double the size.

“It’s going to be right around 11,000 square feet,” he said.

The reason for such an exponential increase in its facility size, Faber said, is the similar growth Simplicity has seen in its personnel – specifically in the North Central region.

“We have seen some really nice growth in our team to help service the market and our presence in that area,” he said. “So, as we’ve grown in the area, we’ve added some additional staff, and we want to make sure that as we continue to grow that we have space to grow into.”

Building the new facility to be future-proof, Faber said, ensures Simplicity can call its new operational location home for more than just a few years.

“Three years down the road, (we don’t want to be) in trouble because we’ve outgrown the space we had just built,” he said. “Really, the idea was to look forward. We’re certainly mindful of the resources that we’re using of our members – putting them to good use – so we’re not making it larger than what we think (we need), but at the same time, (we’re) making sure that we plan for growth in the future, too.”

Faber said “with members of (Simplicity’s) leadership team regularly traveling between locations,” the credit union’s clients can expect to see between 30-40 new and familiar employees at the branch once complete.

“We do utilize more of a hybrid model for our staff, especially those who are able to (work from home),” he said. “So, while we have 30-40 (employees), not every day are those 30-40 in… It really helps reinforce the kind of culture that we have – our people-helping-people model – whether it be our external or internal members.”

Improved service

With the new branch, per Simplicity’s website, will come “the same great service (customers) know and love, plus some upgrades.”

Being “mindful” of the technology the credit union invests in, Faber said Simplicity is planning to roll out additional Personal Teller Machines – or PTMs – at its new location.

“One of the things that we will be adding to this location that we really haven’t experimented too much with is an all-PTM drive-up,” he said. “As we look at our 24/7 access, or trying to provide 24/7 access, the PTM drive-up is something we’re going to be exploring with this new location.”

PTMs, according to Source Technologies (sourcetech.com), are self-service kiosks “specifically designed for financial institutions to automate in-branch transactions… offering much more functionality than ATMs, while decreasing expenses.”

Faber said Simplicity has a how-to video explaining what a PTM is and how members use it on the credit union’s website.

“We do have a PTM at our Neillsville (branch) – which is a location we built and moved into in late 2023 – but this will be the first, multi-lane PTM drive-up that we’re going to be (offering),” he said. “The PTMs allow us to do a lot of the same transactions, just in a much quicker fashion.”

Employing a data-driven, decision-making process, Faber said the services Simplicity’s PTMs are entrusted with were selected to increase the credit union’s speed by automating specific tasks.

“We’ve put a lot of time and effort into analyzing the services that are being used,” he said. “We take a look at a lot of our survey information… and utilize it to help make some of the decisions that we’re making as we move forward.”

Visit Simplicity Credit Union’s social media pages for more on the progress at its new facility and details on events leading up to the grand opening.