MECHANICSBURG, Penn. – The bankers may have convinced a federal judge to scrap the broad community charter for Members 1st FCU, but that won’t slow down the rapid growth of the $1.4 billion credit union.
“If the bankers thought they confined us, they didn’t,” Members 1st’s President Bob Marquette said yesterday, noting plans to cultivate some 800 groups his credit union has been developing partnerships with and turning them into select employee groups.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania is expected to order Members 1st and two other regional credit unions, AmeriChoice FCU and New Cumberland FCU, to dissolve a broad, five-county charter covering some 1.2 million people between York and the state capital of Harrisburg, and to return to their prior charters. For Members 1st, that will mean serving the 1,000 SEGs it served before NCUA granted the new charter in 2004.
Since then, growth has boomed for Members 1st, but Marquette said it doesn’t have to slow down under the old charter. “I’m not going to kid you, we’ve done well under a community charter. No doubt about it.” he told The Credit Union Journal yesterday. “But we’ve been successful as a multiple group credit union for the first 50 years of our charter and we will continue to be successful.”
Several other options also are being considered, such as a conversion to a state charter, where a much broader community grant currently is being challenged by the bankers in court.
Either way, Marquette vowed, branch expansion will continue, with plans to add five additional service centers, three in local schools, to the current network of 31.
