WASHINGTON – Consumer flight to credit unions has accelerated the past few months, with as many as 500,000 new members added to the membership roles in March, a record for a single month, according to CUNA.
Those figures are expected to be revised downward but anywhere near those numbers would amount to new records, according to Bill Hampel, chief economist for CUNA. “What we’re seeing is the continuing tail of the whole course of events surrounding Bank Transfer Day last year,” said Hampel, of the September move by Bank of America to charge a debit card fee and driving millions of consumers away from big banks.
Figures compiled by CUNA suggest as many as 1.9 million consumers have joined credit unions since last September, the most fertile period in the 100-year history of credit unions and pushing total membership above 95 million nationwide.
NCUA has yet to report its own figures for the first quarter, but its data based on reporting from all of the nation's 7,200 credit unions showed record membership growth in the fourth quarter and for the second half of 2011.
CUNA’s estimates, based on a monthly survey of 450 credit unions, show as many as 300,000 members joined credit unions in January and 400,000 in February, also near all-time records.
The new members have been slow to pay off, as both loan growth and deposit growth has been slow for the first quarter of the year, but Hampel and other credit union experts expect the additions to pay off later on down the road.
The membership numbers include both new account holders and those who have been eliminated from the membership rolls.
