Credit Union CEO Salaries Surpass Bank CEO's Base Pay

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Talk about a punch in the gut. not only are more credit union executives beating out bank executives for new loans-in many cases, they're getting paid a lot more to do it.

Compared with their counterparts at similarly sized banks, CEOs of credit unions with $250 million or more in assets have larger base salaries, according to a recent study by enetrix, a division of Gallup, prepared for the Credit Union Executives Society. At institutions with $500 million to $1 billion in assets, for example, the median CEO base salary is $325,000 at credit unions, versus $221,000 at banks.

"Credit unions are paying their folks more than two times what I pay mine," Jeffrey Mozena, president and CEO of Premier Financial in Dubuque, Iowa, said at a recent meeting in Washington hosted by the American Bankers Association. "In many ways, we are losing to hyper-competitive credit unions," on performance, customer satisfaction and staffing.

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