WASHINGTON – Members of the credit union-start-up REALTORS FCU, billed as the nation’s first virtual credit union, voted over the weekend during the annual convention of its sponsor, the National Association of REALTORS, to merge the $75 million credit union into nearby giant Northwest FCU.
Following the merger, the $2.2 billion Herndon, Va., credit union will continue to serve the 7.500 members of REALTORS under the brand REALTORS FCU, a division of Northwest FCU.
The start-up credit union opened its doors less than three years ago with a healthy endowment of a $10 million non-member deposit from the REALTORS association and access to its 1.2 million members nationwide, but like all credit union start-ups faced long odds, with losses of $2.6 million for 2010, $2 million for 2011, and $414,000 for the first quarter of 2012. The demise of the virtual experiment illustrates the difficulty of starting credit unions these days, with fewer than 10 new charters opened over the past three years, the driest spell in the 100-year history of credit unions.
The virtual start-up even reached $90 million in assets a year ago, before falling back to $76 million at the end of the first quarter of 2012.
