WASHINGTON–Several credit union CEOs have upped their level of concern over what they are calling an “existential threat” to the future of credit unions, and that includes the largest  credit unions not doing enough to help the smallest.

Speaking as part of a panel titled “Industry, Good and Not So Good” during Mitchell Stankovic’s Underground conference were:

• Brandi Stankovic, principal, Strategic Advisory (emcee)
• Beverly Anderson, president and CEO of BECU
• Bill Cheney, president and CEO of SchoolsFirst FCU
• Shruti Miyashiro, president and CEO of Digital FCU
• Tansley Stearns, president and CEO of Community Financial CU

The Present & Future

Here’s a look at what each of the panelists had to say about the present and future of credit unions:

Anderson: I want to make three points. The first thing on my mind is about members. I don’t care who you are or where you live, right now you have someone in your family,  you have a member, you have an employee who is experiencing huge amounts of stress, uncertainty, anxiety. They are experiencing things unlike anything that they’ve experienced in their lives…Fifty percent of Americans–these are our members—can’t address a $400 unexpected expense without some sort of financial assistance.

Second, 73 million  Americans are on Medicaid and if you think that’s a certain kind of person, let me tell you who it is: 41% of them are white, 22% of them are black, 25% are Hispanic, and 12% are. other ethnicities. We should be working on our products and solutions and experiences and activities that will address the needs that our members are going to face.

Small Credit Unions

Number two is about small credit unions. We’re a big credit union ($29.3 billion). At BECU we know that small credit unions matter hugely and are critical in this economy and environment. We know that we, the movement, have not done enough and are not doing enough to figure out a systemic viable sustainable approach for small credit unions. This is a scale game. This is the conversation no one wants to talk about…There has to be a solution for small credit unions that serve rural communities that have been banking deserts forever. We have to do something to sustain small credit unions.

I’m excited about BECU and the work we do with Express Credit Union, a partner of ours that is a small credit union in Seattle…We support the needs of this credit union by providing our talent and providing dollars. We provide space and we share members. They serve the underbanked; we send underbanked people to Express. When their members need more they send them to us. That’s the kind of real support we need.

‘Didn’t Get the Memo’

My third point is about DEI. I did not get the memo. I think we need to continue to talk about DEI.  Some people may think I’m in this seat because (of DEI). I’m in this seat because of  30-plus years of hard work, sweat, and tears. 

This movement needs to look like and reflect the communities that we serve and the members who want us to work with them and who trust us for their financial needs. We keep pretending that we’re OK. We are not OK. We have to keep working at this. Diversity is about inclusion. It’s about belonging. It’s about everybody feeling like they can exist underneath the tent.

‘Staying True’

Q: What causes you frustration?

Cheney:  As credit unions we have to stay true to what our values. Your values might be different than my values, but as credit unions it’s all about people helping people. 

Our credit union is headquartered in Southern California and we serve almost 1.5 million mostly school employees and their families. It’s the most diverse state in the country and we have a very diverse membership, a very diverse team. We can’t serve our members if we don’t understand their lived experience. How are we supposed to help them if we don’t know them?

We do a similar thing (as BECU) with it’s called Communidad Latino FCU in Santa Ana. We support them.

‘We’re Under Attack’

I’m glad we’re all here in Washington because we have serious issues to discuss…We’re under attack. There are real threats to our business model. I think taxation might not hurt our credit union…but for some that would be the last straw. (Some will say we don’t) have the powers of banks, but we’re taxed like banks and so maybe we should just be a bank.  I’ll never participate in that, but you could see it happening. We can’t let that happen. There are people who are coming after us and we have to be here now to protect ourselves and more importantly, to protect our members. 

Attacks on credit unions are attacks on 140-million credit union members and there are a lot of people in Washington that don’t want to hear from those 140 million members.

The ‘Ability to Listen’

Miyashiro: One of the things that’s so important in America is the ability to listen to different points of views, understand what is shaping them and still come out ahead with the same purpose…The idea of credit unions, of having a shared purpose, is so deeply true and needed now more than ever.

Before I came to DCU I actually worked at a low-income-designated credit union that was also a CDFI…We talk about our members, and whether it’s at a low-income designated credit union or whether it’s at $12 billion DCU, there is no difference in the people who we are serving and the underserved communities.

Don’t Forget Employees

‘Its not just the individuals who have accounts with us, but also the employees who work with us who are also working towards living wages and being able to lift themselves through growth and development opportunities. The members are not coming in for transactions, they are coming in for the very first car that they will ever own. They are coming in for their very first home they bring their baby home to. Members are coming in for a moment in their lives that matters deeply…We believe in staying with our roots…I recognize it is in an existential crisis today.

We have a lot of things going on in DC and we are talking about consolidating agencies right now. There is a lot of talk already about merging the OCC and FDIC. NCUA is maybe not as far along. The CFPB has canceled quarterly meetings with us but we’re still reporting as a credit union because we don’t know when it will come back up. We don’t know who our regulator may or may not be. We are facing an existential crisis about the very thing that drew us into this movement.

‘Not Seen as Relevant’

Stearns: I’m terribly concerned about the future of this movement. People don’t see us as relevant. That’s our responsibility.

You’ve heard some good examples this morning of collaboration, but we talk a lot more about it than we do it. (We have to move toward) collaborating because there isn’t an industry out there that has that gift the way that we do and it should be a competitive advantage.

That also has to push us toward storytelling again if we want to be relevant, if we want human beings to join and not just join with $25 or $5. They need to see themselves in our organization, starting with belonging and then understand that we have products and services that are going to change their lives for the better. 

Whatever your political beliefs are, all of us have heard very, very clearly over the last several months that most Americans are feeling huge economic strain. If we can’t be the answer to that, why do we exist? 

The ‘Superpower’

I think we overcome that relevancy challenge by using this thing as a superpower. It’s something we take very, very seriously at Community Financial…Listening helps us to understand those economic pains…I believe this week that it’s not anybody else’s job to tell our story…It’s every single one of our jobs and if we don’t start doing that well we won’t be here.

I do think it’s an existential threat and I think our ability to come together…is one of the ways that we ensure that we thrive.