The Growth Credit Unions Cannot Buy
For credit unions, buying growth used to work. It has quietly stopped. The number of federally insured credit unions fell to 4,250 as of March 2026, down 161 from a year earlier, which pushes charter counts within reach of banks for the first time. Consolidation on that scale happens to an institution rather than for it, so mergers are no longer a good path to growth. What remains is organic growth – winning new relationships and deepening the ones already on the books. That would be a manageable position if buying growth still worked, but it no longer does. Curinos now puts the average cost of acquiring a checking customer at $559, roughly double the 2018 figure, and the marginal cost of the next customer climbs past $1,400. Set that spend against a digital funnel that complete...