94 Fun Facts About Credit Union

Who owns a credit union?

The depositors themselves own a credit union: every account holder is a member-owner, and it is the members, not outside shareholders or a parent company, who elect its board.

How are votes allocated when credit union members elect their board of directors?

One vote per member is the rule: a member holding only the minimum balance has the same say in electing the board as the biggest depositor, unlike a bank, where voting power follows stock ownership.

What is the credit union term for a savings deposit?

A share account is the credit union name for a basic savings deposit, because each deposit represents the member's ownership share; checking accounts are likewise called share draft accounts and CDs share certificates.

In several African countries, what is a credit union commonly called?

A SACCO is a savings and credit co-operative, common enough in Kenya to have its own watchdog, the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority. A stokvel is an informal South African savings club.

Which German reformer founded the first urban credit unions, known as people's banks, from 1850?

Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch opened the first one in his home town of Delitzsch, so that artisans and small traders could borrow and hold their own against bigger businesses.

Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded what is often called the first rural credit union in 1864 in which town?

Heddesdorf, now part of Neuwied, is where Raiffeisen refounded his charity society in 1864 as a loan association.

What was Raiffeisen's job while he pioneered rural credit unions?

Mayor of several Rhineland communities from 1845, Raiffeisen had been a soldier until an eye disease forced him out of the army and into the civil service.

What was credit union pioneer Alphonse Desjardins working as in 1897?

A parliamentary reporter: Desjardins transcribed House of Commons debates, and from 1897 he spent three years studying Europe's cooperative banks as an answer to usury.

What did Desjardins call the parish-based credit unions he developed for Quebec?

Caisses populaires was the name Desjardins gave them; he drew on European models but anchored each caisse in a Catholic parish, which supplied a ready-made community bond.

In which Quebec town did Desjardins found his first credit union on December 6, 1900?

Lévis, across the St. Lawrence from Quebec City, was Desjardins's home town, and the Desjardins Group that grew from that first branch still has its headquarters there.

Who ran Alphonse Desjardins's first credit union day to day while he was away at work for half the year?

His wife, Dorimène, oversaw the daily business between 1903 and 1906 while raising their ten children, and is now honoured as co-founder of the movement.

Which institution was the first credit union in the U.S.?

St. Mary's Bank of Manchester, New Hampshire, was started by a French-Canadian parish for its mill workers, with Alphonse Desjardins coming down from Quebec to advise.

Where did America's first credit union initially operate?

In the home of attorney Joseph Boivin, who volunteered his house and his evenings; the building on Notre Dame Avenue is now America's Credit Union Museum.

Which department-store magnate is called the father of the U.S. credit union movement?

Edward Filene, who built the Filene's stores, helped win the first state credit union law in 1909 and then set up a national bureau to spread the idea across the country.

Which state passed America's first comprehensive credit union law, in 1909?

Massachusetts passed the first general credit union statute in 1909, championed by its bank commissioner, so any qualifying group could form one without a special act of the legislature.

Which lawyer was hired in the 1920s to run the Credit Union National Extension Bureau and campaign for state laws?

Roy Bergengren travelled the country winning state credit union laws, then pressed Congress for a federal one, which passed in 1934.

Which president signed the Federal Credit Union Act into law during the Great Depression?

Franklin Roosevelt signed it on June 26, 1934, to make credit available and encourage thrift; the law let a credit union be chartered anywhere in the country.

What is the US system called under which a credit union may be organised under federal or state law?

Dual chartering dates from 1934, when a federal charter was added as an alternative to the state laws already on the books; a credit union can still choose either.

The Credit Union National Association was founded in which Colorado town?

Estes Park hosted the 1934 meeting at which state leagues formed a national association of their own, replacing the Extension Bureau that had promoted credit unions since 1921.

Which bank's planned $5 monthly debit card fee helped spark 2011's Bank Transfer Day, a push to join credit unions?

Bank of America's fee was the last straw for Kristen Christian, whose Facebook event named November 5 as the day to move money out of the big banks.

The 1998 Supreme Court case on credit union membership began with a credit union serving which company's workers?

AT&T Family Federal Credit Union had been allowed to sign up employer groups with no tie to the phone company, so banks sued; they won, and Congress rewrote the law within six months.

What does NCUA stand for?

National Credit Union Administration is the independent regulator Congress created in 1970, after decades in which the bureau overseeing federal credit unions was passed between four other agencies.

How much federal insurance does each member of a federally insured credit union have, at minimum?

$250,000 per member per ownership category is the NCUSIF limit, raised from $100,000 during the 2008 financial crisis and made permanent by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, matching the FDIC's limit for banks.

Who appoints the board members of the NCUA, the federal regulator of credit unions?

The US president appoints all three, with the Senate's consent; the law bars more than two from belonging to one party, so the board cannot be a single-party body.

As of 2025, which is the largest U.S. credit union by both assets and membership?

Navy Federal began in 1933 as a small credit union for Navy Department employees in Washington; by the end of 2025 it had 15.3 million members and $197 billion in assets.

Losses on which investments sank the two largest corporate credit unions, seized by regulators in 2009?

Mortgage-backed securities collapsed in value in the 2008 crash, leaving five corporate credit unions insolvent; ordinary credit unions paid assessments for years to cover the losses.

In U.S. cooperative finance, what is a 'corporate' as opposed to a 'natural-person' institution?

One that serves other credit unions: a corporate credit union provides clearing, investment and liquidity services to retail credit unions; the two largest, U.S. Central and WesCorp, were seized by the NCUA in March 2009.

In which month is International Credit Union Day celebrated each year?

October: the third Thursday was set aside in 1948, when the US trade body CUNA launched a national Credit Union Day; the celebration later spread abroad and became international.

In U.S. credit union regulation, what does a 'field of membership' define?

Who is eligible to join is what a field of membership sets out, and it has been fought over: banks sued in the 1990s to stop the regulator letting credit unions add unrelated groups.

Where is the World Council of Credit Unions headquartered?

Madison, Wisconsin is its base because the World Council grew out of the overseas extension arm of the US credit union association, which worked from Madison.

Which type of loan does US federal law cap at 12.25% of a credit union's assets?

Member business loans are limited to 1.75 times a credit union's net worth, which works out to 12.25% of assets for a well-capitalised one; loans under $50,000 don't count.

About how many members did federally insured US credit unions have in early 2026?

About 146 million: membership reached 145.8 million in the first quarter of 2026 even as the number of credit unions fell to 4,250, a third of the 1990 total.

PenFed, founded in 1935, originally served civilian and military employees of which federal department?

The War Department's civilian and military staff organized PenFed's forerunner in 1935; the institution later took the name Pentagon Federal Credit Union, shortened to PenFed, and grew into one of the largest federal credit unions.

Credit unions were launched in which European country in 1992, reaching about 2.2 million members within two decades?

Poland's credit unions grew out of a 1989 request from the Solidarity movement, which asked the World Council of Credit Unions to help start them as communism fell.

Which pastor organized the first U.S. credit union in 1908 for the French-Canadian mill workers of his parish?

Monseigneur Pierre Hevey saw that his parishioners had nowhere safe to save or to borrow at fair rates, so he sought advice from Alphonse Desjardins in Quebec.

Per the World Council of Credit Unions, why must a not-for-profit credit union still earn a small surplus?

To maintain capital and solvency: a credit union takes no donations, so income from loans and investments has to exceed operating costs and dividends, with the surplus retained as the reserves regulators require.

As of 2025, the biggest US credit union by assets is headquartered in which Virginia town?

Vienna, in Fairfax County, is the headquarters, though it is not the biggest site: the campus in Pensacola, Florida, has about 8,500 staff to Vienna's 5,600.

As of 2025, the largest US credit union holds a single-sponsor charter under which federal body?

The Department of Defense is the sponsor: membership once tied to one service's staff now takes in the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, Coast Guard and veterans.

Which institution serves as the central bank for Germany's Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken?

DZ Bank, based in Frankfurt, serves about 700 local cooperative banks, and pooling their business has made it Germany's second-largest bank by assets.

What role does the Central Liquidity Facility, created by Congress in 1979, play for US credit unions?

Lender of last resort: the facility was modelled on the Federal Reserve's discount window, so a sound credit union that runs short of cash can borrow instead of failing.

How was the NCUSIF funded when it was created to insure deposits?

Solely by credit unions: the NCUSIF took no Treasury money, and when it came under strain in the mid-1980s the insured credit unions rebuilt it themselves by depositing one percent of their insured shares.

Which 1998 law, H.R. 1151, restored multiple-group credit union charters after banks won in court?

Credit Union Membership Access Act was signed that August, under six months after the ruling; it also made the regulator set capital levels below which a credit union's activities are restricted.

In US credit union jargon, what does the acronym CUSO stand for?

Credit Union Service Organization: a company owned by credit unions, set up so that several can pool their money and staff to offer services none could afford to build alone.

Who was elected in 2008 to lead Desjardins Group, serving as its chair and chief executive until 2016?

Monique Leroux was already an insider: she had joined Desjardins in 2001 after senior posts at Royal Bank and Quebecor, then won the 2008 vote and a second term in 2012.

CUNA merged with NAFCU in 2024 to form which new trade association?

America's Credit Unions launched in 2024, ending more than half a century in which two national associations, one of them founded in 1967, had lobbied Washington separately.

Which senator sponsored the Federal Credit Union Act in the US Senate?

Morris Sheppard, a Texas Democrat, steered the act through the Senate after two years of lobbying by the movement; the first federal charter went to a Texarkana credit union named after him.

Golden 1 Credit Union paid $120 million over 20 years to name which NBA team's arena?

Sacramento Kings games are played at Golden 1 Center, which opened downtown in 2016; the sponsor is a hometown one, since the credit union has its headquarters in Sacramento.

Mountain America Stadium, renamed in a 2023 credit union deal, belongs to which college?

Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe took the name in 2023 under a 15-year deal, even though the credit union behind it is based in Utah.

Which credit union principle keeps your account open after you leave the sponsor employer?

Once a member, always a member: someone who changes jobs or moves away keeps the account, and members of a credit union that is absorbed by another stay on with the new one.

Which Archbishop of Canterbury backed credit unions against payday lenders in 2013?

Justin Welby told the boss of payday lender Wonga that the Church would try to compete it out of business by backing credit unions; Wonga itself later collapsed into administration.

Which Dutch cooperative bank grew out of a merger of Protestant and Catholic farmers' lending federations?

Rabobank's name is itself the merger: 'Ra' from the Protestant-leaning Raiffeisen-Bank of Utrecht and 'bo' from the Catholic Boerenleenbank of Eindhoven.

Which body has overall charge of regulating credit unions in the Irish Republic?

Central Bank of Ireland is the regulator; the Irish League of Credit Unions, which many would guess, is the movement's own trade body and has no legal power over its members.

Most Canadian credit unions sit outside the federal scheme that protects bank accounts, so who covers their members' savings?

Provincial insurers cover them, because most credit unions hold provincial charters; only the few with federal charters come under the national scheme that protects bank deposits.

In the CAMELS rating system used by the NCUA, what does the final S stand for?

Sensitivity to market risk is the S, chiefly the danger that a swing in interest rates hurts earnings; the system the NCUA adopted in 1987 had only the five CAMEL letters.

Which three-word phrase is the credit union movement's best-known motto?

People helping people is the motto used across the movement, summing up the idea of members pooling savings to lend to one another; it is the phrase credit unions put on International Credit Union Day materials.

Which Texas congressman championed the Federal Credit Union Act in the House and later proposed an independent credit union regulator?

Wright Patman is counted as a father of the 1934 act, and his 1967 bill for an independent regulator was the first step toward the agency Congress created three years later.

UNI Financial Cooperation, Canada's first federally chartered credit union, is based in which province?

New Brunswick is home to UNI, the cooperative of the province's French-speaking Acadians, based in Caraquet; taking a federal charter in 2016 moved it under the national regulator and deposit insurer.

Which group did Vancity become the first BC lender to offer mortgages to, in 1961?

Women could get a Vancity mortgage without a male co-signer from 1961, a first for British Columbia; in 1986 the credit union also launched Canada's first socially responsible mutual fund, the Ethical Growth Fund.

The UK's first recorded credit union was formed in 1960 in which Northern Ireland city?

Derry Credit Union was formed in 1960 by a handful of founders pooling a few pounds of savings, inspired by the movement that had started across the border in the Republic two years earlier.

Alliant Credit Union was founded in 1935 to serve employees of which airline?

United Airlines staff set it up, and it kept the United Airlines Employees' Credit Union name until 2003; today it has no branches at all and operates entirely online.

Golden 1 was founded in 1933 as a credit union for which group?

California state employees were its founding members: it opened as California State Employees' Credit Union #1, and the number survived when it was renamed Golden 1 in 1977.

Which computer maker's staff founded what was, as of 2025, New England's biggest credit union?

Digital Equipment Corporation employees founded DCU in 1979 after staff complained to chief executive Ken Olsen that they struggled to get mortgages.

Servus Credit Union, one of Canada's largest, is based in which province?

Alberta is home to Servus, based in Edmonton and assembled by merging smaller regional credit unions, the largest of which dated from 1938.

Which national trade body replaced Credit Union Central of Canada in 2016?

Canadian Credit Union Association was the new name for a body founded in 1953; the change marked its shift from serving provincial centrals to speaking for credit unions outside Quebec.

US federal credit unions are forbidden from charging what on loans?

Prepayment penalties are barred by the Federal Credit Union Act, which guarantees a borrower the right to repay a loan in whole or in part on any business day without penalty.

Which Nobel Peace laureate became the Irish League of Credit Unions' youngest president?

John Hume helped found his home city's credit union in 1960 and was elected president of the Irish League of Credit Unions at 27, its youngest; he said the credit union movement was the work he was proudest of.

Hornsey Co-operative, one of Britain's first credit unions, was founded in 1964 by migrants from where?

The Caribbean families who settled in north London brought the habit with them, since credit unions were already popular back home; Hornsey later merged into London Capital Credit Union.

The Antigonish Movement that seeded Maritime credit unions was run from which university?

St. Francis Xavier's Extension Department, set up in 1928 under Father Moses Coady, sent organisers into fishing and mining villages to start study clubs, and credit unions grew out of them.

What was Nora Herlihy's day job while she built Ireland's credit union movement?

National school teacher: in her Dublin classroom in the 1950s Herlihy saw what unemployment and moneylending did to her pupils' families, and set out to give them somewhere better to borrow.

Which Tolstoy novel cites Germany's people's-bank movement in a debate over how to organise farm labour?

Anna Karenina: when Levin frets over how to run his estate, a neighbour points him to the German cooperative movement as the question 'absorbing the best minds in Europe'.

Louise Herring, the 'Mother of Credit Unions', started out in the personnel department of which grocery chain?

Kroger was her employer in Cincinnati; she went on to attend the 1934 meeting that founded the national association and is credited with organising more than 500 credit unions.

Raiffeisen's 'three S' formula demanded self-help, self-governance and self-what?

Responsibility completes the trio, in German Selbsthilfe, Selbstverwaltung and Selbstverantwortung; Raiffeisen held that poverty comes from dependency, so members had to answer for their own society.

Under the 1979 Act, UK credit unions had to register with which official?

Registrar of Friendly Societies was the official named in the 1979 Act, the first law written for credit unions in Britain; until then they had registered as companies or as provident societies.

Mountain America Credit Union was founded in the 1930s for workers in which industry?

Telephone service workers founded it as the Salt Lake Telephone Employees' Credit Union; it took a federal charter in 2003 after a state tax was proposed on Utah's three largest credit unions.

Which 1977 federal law covers banks' lending to low-income areas but exempts credit unions?

Community Reinvestment Act duties were left off credit unions on the reasoning that serving their own members already meets the goal; bills to extend the act to them, as in 2009, have not passed.

When the Netherlands' Protestant and Catholic farm-credit banks merged in 1972, which city was chosen as the legal seat?

Amsterdam was picked as the statutory seat because it was neutral ground between the two founders' home cities; the working head office stayed in Utrecht.

France's Crédit Mutuel traces back to an 1882 village bank on the German Raiffeisen model near which city?

Strasbourg lies a few miles from La Wantzenau, where the bank opened while Alsace was under German rule; by 1914 the network there had grown to 471 local banks.

Which cooperative bank did Luigi Luzzatti, later Italy's prime minister, found in 1865?

Banca Popolare di Milano was Italy's second cooperative bank, after the one at nearby Lodi; it lent to shopkeepers, artisans and peasants who until then had only pawnbrokers and moneylenders.

Anyonya, the subcontinent's earliest credit cooperative, began in 1889 in which princely state?

Baroda's Anyonya society began in 1889 with just 23 members as an alternative to moneylenders; India's first cooperative bank, it was liquidated in 2013 after financial mismanagement.

Japan's shinkin banks, cooperative lenders created by a 1951 law, bar which kind of customer from membership?

Large companies are shut out: a firm with more than 300 employees and over ¥900 million in capital cannot join, which keeps shinkin banks lending to small local businesses and residents.

Which charge do Great Britain's rules cap for credit unions?

Interest on loans is capped at 3% a month; the limit was raised from 2% in 2014 because credit unions could not break even on small, short-term loans.

What was the title of Moses Coady's only book?

Masters of Their Own Destiny told the story of the Antigonish Movement, whose method later drew organisers from around the world to Antigonish, where the Coady International Institute has trained them since 1959.

Which body represents Australia's credit unions, mutual banks and building societies?

Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA) is the Australian industry body for credit unions, mutual banks and building societies; many of the country's larger credit unions rebranded as mutual banks in the 2010s.

In 2015 Desjardins Group took over the Canadian business of which American insurer?

State Farm handed its Canadian arm to the Quebec cooperative, which now runs it as Desjardins Insurance: a mutual owned by policyholders sold to a co-op owned by its members.

Which three US states leave credit union regulation entirely to the federal government?

Delaware, South Dakota and Wyoming have no state credit union chartering law, so a credit union based in any of the three has to hold a federal charter; every other state offers its own charter alongside the federal one.

The NCUA's predecessor bureau was first housed inside which agency?

Farm Credit Administration, the New Deal agency for rural America's money troubles, was handed the new credit union division in 1934; the division moved three more times before becoming independent.

Credit union law co-author Pierre Jay became the first chairman of which body?

Federal Reserve Bank of New York opened in 1914 with Jay, a descendant of Founding Father John Jay and the former state bank commissioner who helped draft the 1909 credit union law, as its first chairman and Federal Reserve Agent.

Who founded Spolok Gazdovský, often called Europe's first cooperative credit society, in 1845?

Samuel Jurkovič, then the schoolteacher in the village of Sobotište, founded the farmers' association; it lasted only until 1851 but became the root of Slovakia's cooperative movement.

Members of the 1845 Slovak farmers' cooperative had to do what every year?

Plant two trees in public was the rule: the society's statutes required each member to plant two trees each year in a public place and to lead a moral life, while loans were funded from members' regular savings.

Where did Leone Wollemborg found Italy's first rural credit union, on the Raiffeisen model, in 1883?

Loreggia, in the countryside near Padua, is where Wollemborg and about thirty farm workers and smallholders started it; until then Italy's cooperative banks had all been urban people's banks.

Which Japanese reformer set up gojōkō village lending unions in the early 1800s?

Ninomiya Sontoku's village unions let any member borrow interest-free for 100 days, and if someone defaulted the whole membership shared the loss.

Which Irish president signed the country's first Credit Union Act into law in 1966?

Éamon de Valera signed it with the movement's best-known founder standing at his side, eight years after Ireland's first credit unions had opened.

The John Deere Employees Credit Union of Waterloo, Iowa, later took what name?

Veridian became the name in 2006 after Deere & Company asked the credit union, by then open to the wider community, to stop using 'John Deere' to avoid confusion with the tractor maker.

CUNA Mutual Group, the insurer built to serve US credit unions, later rebranded under what name?

TruStage is the newer name of CUNA Mutual Group, the mutual insurer the credit union movement set up for itself in 1935, a year after forming its national association.