WASHINGTON – Credit unions leaders opened CUNA’s Government Affairs Conference celebrating last year’s return to health for the industry and a deluge of new members – thanks to last fall’s Bank Transfer Day movement.
“More and more consumers are finding out that credit unions are the best option for financial services,” said CUNA President Bill Cheney to some 4,000 executives and volunteers gathered at Washington’s Convention Center, before bringing out Kristin Christian, whose spur-of-the-moment rant against bank fees prompted millions of consumers to move their funds from big banks to credit unions and community banks.
“Every credit union I spoke to focuses on people instead of profits,” said Christian, a Los Angeles art dealer who has emerged as a credit union spokesman on other issues too, including efforts to get the member business loan bill passed.
“Our challenge is to build on that momentum that Kristin set for us,” said outgoing CUNA Chairman Harriet May, who is retiring after 31 years at El Paso’s GECU. The Bank Transfer day movement may have peaked last September when Bank of America was forced to retract its new fee on debit transactions, said May, “but we can count on BofA or one of the other big banks to come up with something [else] stupid and we are going to jump on it.”
The movement helped push credit union membership growth to its best figures in 20 years, with more than 800,000 new members added in the second half and 1.3 million new members for the year. Experts say an equal amount or more may have transferred to community banks.
CUNA’s Cheney said Bank Transfer Day was the best national branding campaign money can’t – or didn’t – buy. “It was earned media, not paid media, and that’s the best kind of coverage you can get,” he said.
The CUNA CEO touted the credit union rebound from the depths of the financial crisis and the collapse of the corporate credit unions. He noted the rebuilding of capital and record net income for 2011, even after the $1.9 billion corporate assessment from NCUA. “From a financial point of view, credit unions are getting stronger every day, despite the challenges of the financial crisis,” said Cheney.
