Nader Moghaddam, president of Kinecta Financial & Insurance Services and executive vice president with the credit union, said the acquisition would broaden Kinecta's insurance capacity to its more than 190,000 members.

Mr. Moghaddam said Kinecta saw the need to expand its insurance capacity after some hugely successful insurance marketing campaigns showed it needed more insurance expertise.

Kinecta's existing shop, established in the late 1980's, handled $6 million in personal lines premium and was too small to handle the demand.

"With the number of members we have, we felt we didn't have enough capacity to serve that membership with property-casualty insurance and we had to increase the capacity," he observed.

The acquisition of Apollo was a natural fit because of its existing relationship with five other credit unions, he said, adding that these relationships would continue.

"Apollo's management, given the fact they have dealt with a number of credit union clients, are very attuned to what are some of the key concerns of a membership-owned organization, which ours would be," said Mr. Moghaddam.

He noted that credit unions are not-for-profit organizations. However, they can operate for-profit organizations called CUSO (Credit Union Service Organizations), which Apollo would be apart of.

Apollo currently handles more than $30 million in premium volume for 30,000 clients through five offices and employs 70 people, he said. Its underwriting is principally in Southern California and the company works primarily with Mercury General Insurance.

"Apollo will continue as Apollo; there will be no change in the name or the management," he said. "We see this as no change in their operations and, therefore, no change in their culture to be concerned with. However, they will have the opportunity to market their product to 190,000 of our members and have a captive audience to market to."

Tom Crandall, Apollo's current chief operating officer, will remain in that position. Agency founder and principal Mike Jacobs will continue in a consulting capacity.

Mr. Moghaddam said the credit union insurance marketing effort uses a call center format to contact customers from leads generated over the Internet and direct mailing.

Apollo uses a more traditional approach?"high touch service," Mr. Moghaddam called it?the direct agent to client approach. There are no plans to tinker with that model, he said, adding that each business would probably learn something from the other.

As far as future growth, "we are not aggressive about this and look to do this acquisition well first," Mr. Moghaddam said. "I don't see us turning other acquisitions down, but at this point in time I think we have enough for us to assimilate."