ALEXANDRIA, Va. The American Bankers Association called on NCUA this morning to stop what it sees as a massive back-door field of membership expansion by the newly chartered Thrivent FCU, which could expand from its current membership serving the nation’s Lutherans to all Christians in the U.S.
The FOM expansion would be accomplished because the credit union’s sponsoring group, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, is asking its members to approve an expansion of its common bond to make all Christians in the U.S. eligible to join, and NCUA chartered the $480 million credit union in November to serve anyone who is a member of the umbrella group, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.
Brett Weinberg, director of public relations for the umbrella group, said this morning the a member survey found that membership is in favor of the expansion, which will be voted by the group’s 2.5 million members over the next two months. “This is something we’ve really been talking about for the past several years,” he told the Credit Union Journal.
The bankers called on NCUA this morning to halt the huge expansion. “ABA is concerned that extending Thrivent Financial for Lutherans’ common bond to all Christians would be a considerable and problematic expansion of the credit union’s membership,” wrote Keith Leggett, the ABA’s vice president and chief economist wrote in a letter to NCUA Chairman Debbie Matz this morning. “While Christians may share reasonably similar beliefs, the different and sometimes conflicting doctrinal variations among different denominations suggest that all Christians do not share a meaningful affinity or interaction,” he wrote, citing language included a several federal court rulings on field of membership in federal credit unions.
“In fact,” Leggett said in his letter to Matz, “granting a common bond based upon a person being a Christian is equivalent to specifying that the sole requirement for credit union membership is the person’s age. As you may remember, age by itself (including status as a senior citizen) does not create an affiliation or common interest that is sufficient to support a field of membership at a credit union.
“ABA believes that the National Credit Union Administration has an affirmative obligation to limit this type of expansion. The NCUA needs to ensure a genuine affiliation between credit union members, as Congress mandated,” wrote Leggett.
Thrivent Financial’s Weinberg explained that his group, which is defined by the IRS as a fraternal benefit society for tax purposes, must have a clearly defined field of membership or common bond, just like credit unions.
Weinberg said it is important to keep in mind that the field of membership for Thrivent FCU itself is not changing. “It is Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, the fraternal benefit society, that has begun the process of having a member vote to potentially extend the common bond to reach out to more Christians,” he stated. “However, to be a credit union member, an individual must still become a Thrivent member or otherwise meet the credit union’s eligibility requirements, such as being a credit union employee or Thrivent employee.”
He said it is not correct to say that any Christian could join Thrivent FCU if Thrivent’s membership did vote to extend its common bond. The credit union’s membership would still be primarily restricted to those who meet Thrivent’s eligibility criteria and who actually join the fraternal benefit society.
Thrivent FCU was created in November by the merger of Thrivent Financial Bank into the newly chartered credit union, making it one of the largest faith-based credit unions in the U.S. The bank’s 47,000 customers became member-owners of Thrivent FCU upon the transfer of their accounts.
