Xerox FCU to become ‘Xceed’
“It’s great to put together a nice shiny logo and tag line and say, ‘okay here it is.’ But if people don’t get caught up in the excitement, it’s not going to work.” – Teresa Freeborn, Xceed FCU President
Xerox Federal Credit Union recently announced its plans to become ‘Xceed Financial’ at a special event held for more than 200 employees at Universal Studios in California. According to The Credit Union Times, many Xerox staff were flown in from branch locations back east.
No reason was given for the name change, and no information was available at the Xerox FCU website. It doesn’t appear that the credit union will be pursuing a community charter in the near future, so it’s reasonable to assume that a request from Xerox (The Document Company) is driving the name change.
With the new name comes a new tagline, “At work for you,” part of a simultaneous rebranding effort. The new tagline reflects the credit union’s commitment to focus on Xerox and other SEGs.
The CU Times reports that the name is the result of about nine months of consultancy, research, testing and meetings with Xerox and other major SEGs.
Trademark Status:
No one has yet registered “Xceed” or “Exceed” with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office under International Class (IC) 036 Financial Services. There are a few federally registered trademarks in other ICs, mostly technology and bio-sciences.
Domain Name:
The credit union will apparently use either xceedfinancialcu.org or xceedfinancialcu.com as its URL. The CU registered domains for ‘Xceed’ earlier this year. (As of the posting of this article, there were only holding pages at both sites.)
The domain xceedfinancial.com has been registered by a mortgage company in Arizona for the last couple of years, although the website appears to be no longer active. The following screenshot was taken from Archive.org: 
The URL xceed.com is owned by an established technology company.
There is an Xceed Mortgage in Toronto.
Bottom Line:
- The new coined name ‘Xceed’ is distinct.
- ‘Xceed’ has positive connotations in the financial industry.
- The name links back to the credit union’s history with Xerox through the use of the letter “X.”
- The letter “X” is a “techy” naming device (if not a tad cliché), which is why SEGs will find it comfortably familiar.
- While there are a number of other companies with the Xceed name, it doesn’t look like the credit union will face any lawsuits.
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I like this change. They’ve created a unique name that still has close ties to the original (Xerox). As far as web addresses go, they probably need to grab whatever they can that is close, as you note.
It also looks like the 9 months of strategy really paid off because their original acronym, XFCU, for Xerox Federal Credit Union, can still be used with the new name, Xceed Financial Credit Union.
And because the acronym isn’t changing, I’d suggest continuing to use xfcu.org as their main domain. This means no new email addresses or changes and they won’t have to make people change bookmarks or inbound links.
Mike, I think you’re right. I think they will keep the URL they have today as their primary web address. They probably just registered the others to cover their bases.