Credit Union Trivia
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94 free Credit Union trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free credit union trivia questions with answers. This credit union trivia quiz is made for staff meetings, member events, International Credit Union Day celebrations and anyone curious about the movement's history. It starts in 19th-century Germany with Schulze-Delitzsch and Raiffeisen, crosses to Quebec with Alphonse Desjardins and the caisse populaire, and lands in Manchester, New Hampshire, where St. Mary's Bank became America's first credit union in 1908. From there it covers Edward Filene and Roy Bergengren, the Massachusetts law of 1909, the Federal Credit Union Act of 1934, the birth of CUNA in Estes Park, the NCUA and its share insurance fund, the common bond and the 1998 Supreme Court fight, plus the biggest institutions today, from Navy Federal to the Desjardins Group. There are easy questions on what makes a credit union different from a bank and harder ones on dates, names and numbers. Every answer was checked against a reliable source.
30 of 94 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who owns a credit union?
The depositors themselves
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.
Q 02How are votes allocated when credit union members elect their board of directors?
One vote per member
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.
Q 03What is the credit union term for a savings deposit?
A share account
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.
Q 04In several African countries, what is a credit union commonly called?
A SACCO
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.
Q 05Which German reformer founded the first urban credit unions, known as people's banks, from 1850?
Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch
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.
Q 06Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded what is often called the first rural credit union in 1864 in which town?
Heddesdorf
Heddesdorf, now part of Neuwied, is where Raiffeisen refounded his charity society in 1864 as a loan association.
Q 07What was Raiffeisen's job while he pioneered rural credit unions?
Mayor
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.
Q 08What was credit union pioneer Alphonse Desjardins working as in 1897?
A parliamentary reporter
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.
Q 09What did Desjardins call the parish-based credit unions he developed for Quebec?
Caisses populaires
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.
Q 10In which Quebec town did Desjardins found his first credit union on December 6, 1900?
Lévis
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.
Q 11Who ran Alphonse Desjardins's first credit union day to day while he was away at work for half the year?
His wife
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.
Q 12Which institution was the first credit union in the U.S.?
St. Mary's Bank of Manchester
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.
Q 13Where did America's first credit union initially operate?
Q 21The 1998 Supreme Court case on credit union membership began with a credit union serving which company's workers?
AT&T
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.
Q 22What does NCUA stand for?
National Credit Union Administration
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.
Q 23How much federal insurance does each member of a federally insured credit union have, at minimum?
$250,000
In the home of attorney Joseph Boivin
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.
Q 14Which department-store magnate is called the father of the U.S. credit union movement?
Edward Filene
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.
Q 15Which state passed America's first comprehensive credit union law, in 1909?
Massachusetts
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.
Q 16Which lawyer was hired in the 1920s to run the Credit Union National Extension Bureau and campaign for state laws?
Roy Bergengren
Roy Bergengren travelled the country winning state credit union laws, then pressed Congress for a federal one, which passed in 1934.
Q 17Which president signed the Federal Credit Union Act into law during the Great Depression?
Franklin Roosevelt
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.
Q 18What is the US system called under which a credit union may be organised under federal or state law?
Dual chartering
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.
Q 19The Credit Union National Association was founded in which Colorado town?
Estes Park
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.
Q 20Which bank's planned $5 monthly debit card fee helped spark 2011's Bank Transfer Day, a push to join credit unions?
Bank of America
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.
$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.
Q 24Who appoints the board members of the NCUA, the federal regulator of credit unions?
The US president
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.
Q 25As of 2025, which is the largest U.S. credit union by both assets and membership?
Navy Federal
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.
Q 26Losses on which investments sank the two largest corporate credit unions, seized by regulators in 2009?
Mortgage-backed securities
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.
Q 27In U.S. cooperative finance, what is a 'corporate' as opposed to a 'natural-person' institution?
One that serves other credit unions
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.
Q 28In which month is International Credit Union Day celebrated each year?
October
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.
Q 29In U.S. credit union regulation, what does a 'field of membership' define?
Who is eligible to join
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.
Q 30Where is the World Council of Credit Unions headquartered?
Madison, Wisconsin
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.