In a 7-to-0 decision, Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court ruled against the Pennsylvania Bankers Association and four banking companies that were seeking to block two credit unions from adopting five Philadelphia-area counties as their field of membership.
The $774 million-asset TruMark Financial Credit Union of Trevose and the $270 million-asset Freedom Credit Union in Philadelphia originally applied for the expanded fields in 2003. The Pennsylvania Department of Banking approved the applications in December 2004, and the bank group, seeking to overturn the decision, filed suit against the regulator in November.
The bank group argued that the five counties - Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Philadelphia, and Montgomery - make up a region so large and so populous that its inhabitants lack the common bond that credit union members must have.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to prove conclusively that the expanded charters would harm them.
