BY JEFF KLINE
Rather than being viewed as the competition, fellow credit unions should be thought of as allies. If ever there was a way for CUs to compete with the nation’s top banks, cooperation is it. Discover what gains are to be had from collaborating with other credit unions.
Those of us who work on behalf of credit unions learned terms like “cooperation,” “one member, one vote” and “mutual self-help” in the early days of our careers. Starting with no capital, people of ordinary means pooled their savings and earned dividends while those who needed to borrow had a ready resource to draw from. Of course, the financial industry has become much more complex than it was a century ago, both for the for-profit sector and the cooperative community. But the premise behind our cooperative model continues to work today.
Sadly, our industry doesn’t always practice collaboration at the professional level, often out of fear of giving away a competitive edge. Yet it’s rare for credit unions to truly compete with each other. There’s plenty of market share to go around. Even with record shares of more than $1 trillion, U.S. credit unions have less than a tenth of the deposits of the nation’s top four banks.
Collaboration Brings Greater Value.
At MEMBERS Development Company, we help credit unions pool their resources, ideas and expertise to offer members not only affordable products and services that enhance their financial well-being but also the convenience of today’s technology. For me, working in the credit union community has always been gratifying, but partnering with some of the nation’s largest credit unions to work for the good of their current and prospective members is an exceptional experience.
In the past year, MDC has gained 10 new owners with others in the pipeline, evidence that collaboration is still a very good idea supported by many credit unions.
