Enjoyed Frank J. Diekmann's Sept. 6th Editor's column, "Why Isn't Every Credit Union A Shared Branch?" I don't need to echo the comments made by Craig Beach or Sarah Canepa-Bang, but in my opinion, credit unions have a tremendous opportunity to effectively diminish the banking industry's present branch location advantage, by participating and promoting the shared branching system.
Because of the very nature of our cooperative base, as opposed to the banking industry's for profit mind-set, we can effectively create an extremely competitive branching environment. Since banks would NEVER entertain the concept of shared facilities, I'm willing to bet that in most states, if credit unions were to aggressively embrace the service center concept, we could match or beat any existing single bank branching network.
As I told our folks at this year's annual meeting, I know they are going to do great things together in the future and that what they will accomplish is limited only to their collective imaginations.
Bob Bianchini, President
Oklahoma Credit Union League, Tulsa
