Chip Filson
The Seated Boxer, an iconic ancient Greek work of art, shows a grizzled veteran of the ring, equal parts resigned and ready to spring into action.
What I like is a sense of respite from competition, the powerful athletic physique and the tiredness that surrounds his humanity. Is he a winner this day? Are there more fights to go? How will his efforts be remembered?
These are questions that all of us encounter, in literal or figurative ways, in our daily efforts.
Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame, is taking his radio performance on the road around the country in one night stands.
Recently he was in Des Moines and drove across the Iowa farmscape prompting this post:
It was dramatic to drive for hundreds of miles and see no barns or silos, no windmill or grove around a farmhouse, the Grant Wood landscape of rural America, and see what corporate industrial agriculture looks like. It looks like Siberia. A place you send people as punishment.
A culture is slipping away that raised some fine self-reliant relatives of mine like my Aunt Eleanor who could handle a rifle, hitch up horses to a wagon, bake bread, plant a garden, throw a baseball, kill a chicken, sew clothing from a pattern, do basic repairs, and speak her mind in firm declarative sentences. The farm made her a strong woman and I say the world could use more like her.
Well, cultures are mortal, just as we are, and it’s a shame when the worthwhile peter out and the worst prosper, such as the culture of consultancy. Some of the stupidest managers I’ve encountered in my life now hang out their shingles as consultants prepared to advise on strategic planning and team building, who when I knew them were adept at strategic blather and creative imitation. I believe that AI will devastate their ranks and soon we’ll encounter them at drive-up windows, consulting on condiments and large vs. medium shakes.
I found myself reflecting on the idea that cultures are mortal in this obsevation which Keillor titled Looking Around, Not Looking Ahead as I read the following ad via a virtual credit union daily subscriber list:
Dollar Associates has successfully guided over 400 credit union mergers in their 22 years in business. As their tagline says, “We know credit unions backwards and forward. Especially forward.”
Mergers as a so-called growth strategy began in earnest following PenFed’s national McKinsey-like strategy of seeking mergers nation-wide in 2016. The first big success was acquiring Fort Belvoir FCU, a local well-entrenched competitor. The standard gambit was promises of a better future combined with multi-year sinecures for the CEO, plus bonuses for senior management, three-year employee commitments or large separation payments to staff. And of course, nothing for members except a bigger organization. All details wrapped up with non-disclosure agreements including non-disparagement clauses for everyone who cashed out.
The solicitations were overt. And PenFed’s over two dozen mergers from a post office credit union in Wisconsin to a Sperry Associates in New York did not add a single member, loan or asset to the movement.
But it changed the merger game from historical rescues of faltering credit unions in return for expanded FOM’s by regulators, into a wide-open pursuit of non-organic growth strategies. Mergers looked easy, quick and most importantly, the continuing credit union gets paid in-free capital. Just for taking over a business you already know how to run.
These are not market based transactions despite occasional regulatory utterances suggesting the same. They are private deals, done in secret without any member input or notice, documented by signed “definitive agreements” and then sprung upon members. Often accompanied with a PR barrage with videos of the two CEO’s proclaiming a new promised land all executed without any member input or knowledge.
This is the merger world today. Dollar claims to have “guided over 400 credit union mergers” which it would be fair to assume the bulk have taken place in the last decade of the movement’s merger frenzy.
These transfers of control of an entire credit union’s operation, net worth, facilities and its legacy franchise value are not business transactions. The only “negotiations” involve how much the selling CEO and senior staff and sometimes board members will gain from the deal. If there are enforceable agreements about future commitments, they are never disclosed or done so with the caveat “if conditions permit.”
While members have a say in all states except Illinois state charters which use proxy voting, the process, transparency and information for informed consent is a charade. Almost all votes are returned by mail ballot with the official Board Notice letter urging member approval—as the event has already received regulatory blessing, subject only to the member vote.
Because these are political events not real business transactions, facilitators are needed. Brokers to quietly solicit candidates, test the waters and make introductions. Accountants, “strategic” consultants and lawyers to draft the private definitive agreements, Most importantly, external professional experts, such as former regulators, to assure boards, for whom this will be a singular and the final event of their tenure.
These volunteer board members need external assurance that they are doing the right thing, because it is irreversible. The so-called professionals will assist getting the necessary regulatory sign-offs-just look at our track record of 400 cases. Trust us, everybody else is doing it as well. You are in good hands.
The facilitators all take their cut of the pie, the vendors who are eliminated get cancellation fees, and staff promised greater professional opportunities. The member-owners receive nothing and lose their accumulated net worth. Most consequential is that the legacy relationships and goodwill which built the credit union as a community resource to be paid forward for future generations is now gone.
Invoking Dollar’s hindsight, almost all mergers in this decade long period of private deal making have been of credit unions at least three generations old, with long serving records of meaningful community relationships and contributions.
Per Dollar’s claim, the industry now has lost 400 independent charters, their several thousand volunteer board members, and the CEO and other professional community leadership roles. Their local and state political standing is gone.
Most importantly their function as an economic intermediary, taking the savings of local members and reinvesting back into loans for those same owners, no longer exists. For now all these functions and responsibilities are controlled by a new board, often without any connections or knowledge and whose priorities are set following their historical ties and priorities. The merged entity has no standing or recourse as the new brand and culture assert their sway and operational model over the merged field of membership.
The facilitators and apologists for this cooperative self-annihilation claim they are positioning credit unions for the future. Consolidation is inevitable, just let us show you the charts. You need to get ahead of the game before all the “best” options (read payoffs) are gone. Or worse, there might be a new regulatory change that would make it harder to get your cash prize payout. Or worse, you may have to be more transparent in your intent and process.
Let’s be clear. No one knows the future, Change is inevitable. The current culture and political example of getting yours while you can, may indeed continue. The animal spirits of capitalism, the drive for monopoly power may infect credit unions so thoroughly that the industry goes the way of the S&L’s. The big go away. The small and traditional, still around, but humble, toothless in all except a few communities and a charter neither sought by individuals or desired by the public
But change could also come in the form of a backlash–public, political or regulator. New coop regulatory leadership might start asking questions such as, what is the public duty credit unions owe in return for their federal tax exemption? What is the common good member-ownership is supposed to inspire? Are credit unions following their own principles of governance and historical values? Has cooperative leadership been usurped by self-interested individuals oblivious to their inherted legacy, current members’ welfare and their future generations?
The credit union system knows full well what this period of merger manipulation and self-dealing entails. For at the same time credit unions are actively buying whole banks as part of their “external growth” strategies. And in these events, the owners get paid out for their common equity interest and then a premium on top as credit unions can only pay cash, not stock to bank owners.
Certainly, one potential path to the future is the Dollar model. The firm claims 400 success points to prove it can get the job done. Cash out now, forget the past legacy, take the money and let someone else worry about the future of your members.
I may just be like Garrison Keillor surveying the loss of the family farms to the industrial agriculture industry today. I would prefer a different, more diverse set of credit union options and leadership voices drivng the future. But sometimes the next generation’s responsibility may be to clean up past excesses before creating something that inspires again.
I just received this video of six credit union state league Presidents recording a song in a studio.
The six state CEOs will be familiar to many CU veterans. From left to right they are: Tony Schumacher , Gene Farley. Carroll Beach, Brad Murphy, David Dinning and Bob Biancini.
Note: Skip ahead to 17 seconds to begin the video.
I thought you might get a kick out of this . The video was shot in 1982 I was at a meeting in New Orleans with a number of Credit Union League CEO’s . I do remember our gang walking from our hotel to a restaurant, “The Court of 2 Sisters” (still in business!) On our way we passed this recording facility where you could watch people making mostly silly videos. The general consensus was, why would anyone embarrass themselves like that ?
On the way back from the restaurant after consuming about a bottle of wine each, this was the result.
The song’s lyrics might not pass muster today, but you have to admit they put on an excellent show. But I think it tells a lot more about credit union leadership than the changing culture attitudes on relationships.
In this year of credit union history, the state league system was at its peak strength. In some states credit unions were so numerous that there were even competing state level organizations.
Leagues were vital pillars of the movement in this formative decade as credit union entered deregulation. State charters were the only option until 1934. Leagues were the driving force in the federal law pasage providing proof that credit union could be run by ordinary people. State leagues were the vital organizers of both federal and state charters.
At this moment there were 16 state insurance options along with the NCUSIF. States were the incubators for change, innovation and creativity. These included activities off limits to FCU’s such as field of membership flexibility, share drafts, home mortgage loans, ATMS and regulatory oversight and access. NCUA had become a three-person independent agency only in 1977. The Agency was on its second chair, whereas some of these local leaders had served decades.
The state leaders founded CUNA at Estes Park. CUNA was headquartered in Madison with a regulatory office in Washington DC. Through ACULE these leaders coordinated legislative priorities and national leadership. The corporate network was supported by the leagues initially with cross board membership which NCUA ultimately banned.
The system also spawned other organizational support groups with credit unions of similar fields of membership. For example the League of IBM credit unions, Educational. Credit Union Council, the Airline Credit Union Association, and many more with like sponsors.
The results were a strong, grass roots state level system rapidly expanding their growing role in communities in every state. The movement’s success and the system’s support structure were closely linked and interdependent.
Leagues provided support services, education and chapters to promote local social and political interactions. As a state supervisor from 1977 to 1981, I spoke at chapter meetings, annual meetings and worked with the league when examiners found problems. We would ask if someone from their two dozen or more field representatives might help out as we pursuded the shared the goal of a sound system. For in 1977 there was no mandatory share insurance requirement for state charters.
Illinois had the largest number of credit unions of any state with over 1,100 active charters. We wanted the Illinois system to be a national leader in serving Illinois residents. When the Suburban Bank Group sought a charter for its employees, we granted the new charter. Then we hired the energetic person who organized the effort, Wanda Mallow, to promote new charters across the state.
One of those new charters went o Baxter, the medical services company. The company then hired Rex Johnson who was deputy supervisof of DFI’s Chicao credit union office, to be its first CEO.
Through NASCUS, we learned how other state supervisors in Texas, Michigan and California operated. NCUA was rarely present on the ground,
Together the League led by Dick Ensweiller and the Department recodified the Illinois Credit Union Act in 1979 introducing deregulation and flexibility for a changing financial marketplace.
The shape and character of the movement’s system is very different today. Leagues have merged, The number of credit unions has fallen from over 16,00 in 1977 to 4,300 today. Large credit unions operate on their own, some with national ambitions in multiple states.
CUNA moved its operational leadership to DC and focused on national advocacy withdrawing from many support services often offered through the leagues.
Large credit unions dominate the industry. National issues of technology adoption, CUSO business partnerships and regulatory responsiveness leave many smaller organizatons feeling left out or irrelevant. There is no system support for new charters, In fact the opposite is happening with mergers of long serving, sound credit unions a seeming priority for leaders.
The strong capital ratios averaging over 11% and with long serving safe franchises have caused many credit unions to rely less and less on system support, except as an independent business decision. CEO turnover at both credit unions and support organizations has caused the shared efforts from the past to be just memories. NCUA has been leaderless for over a year. Since the 2008 financial crisis, it has strived to be “independent” of credit unions or as one board member more bluntly stated, don’t look to Washington for advice.
The critical question facing the movement is whether a support system is even necessary and if so, for what purpose. The shadows of many of these groups still exist, but there is little to no shared sense of priority or direction. Advocacy means protecting the status quo.
The sense of purpose and serving the common good are sometimes referenced in local planning, but rarely are part of national conversations. At a time of increasing shortcomings in many ways and at many levels of political and business activity, credit union identity is becoming more and more market-like. Coop leaders are playing the merger and growth games they find, rather than defining the game they want to play.
So maybe the nostalgic message of prior relationships recorded by these State League Directors is more prescient than they could have realized. Is the system that spawned today’s credit union industry just is a nostalgic moment of an era now gone forever?
by Will Rogers, Jr.
I was recently asked my thoughts on NCUA’s current policy priority of ten rounds of rule reviews. This earlier article makes the point that an ideological driven policy to eliminate to the maximum government’s oversight responsibilities will end up in a backlash. And put the coop movement in a bad place politically. Here’s why this prior commentary is more relevant than ever.
It takes a special kind of Washington brilliance for a regulator to decide the greatest threat to the republic is its own discretion and then propose a rule to rescue us from itself. But here we are.
The NCUA has unveiled a proposal that essentially says: “We hereby forbid ourselves from misbehaving. We don’t trust ourselves either.”
In a normal world, regulators create guardrails for the people they regulate. Only in our nation’s capital does an agency build guardrails to keep itself from driving off the road.
The Rule’s Premise: Reputation Risk Isn’t Real
This proposal seems to assume that reputation risk is some imaginary creature—like Bigfoot, or a cheerful airline fee.
One wonders whether the drafters have heard of a quaint little story called Wells Fargo, where an institution spent years rebuilding trust after opening millions of fake accounts. But perhaps NCUA thinks that was all just a marketing misunderstanding.
If the agency truly believes reputation risk is fictional, one hopes they never Google “NCUA failures” or, heaven forbid, read their own Inspector General reports.
Who Exactly Is Being Protected Here?
The proposed rule claims to stop NCUA from pressuring a credit union to decline accounts for certain businesses: liquor stores, cannabis operations, burlesque venues, adult-film producers, and so forth.
One might ask: Has this ever happened? Even once? Anywhere?
No.
This is Washington’s favorite sport: solving imaginary problems so it can avoid the real ones.
Meanwhile, the real harm that does exist: merger-driven CEO enrichment, member disenfranchisement, sham elections, and sending member savings to buy out bank shareholders’ at premiums, goes unaddressed –because someone must ensure the men’s club dancers of America are free to open checking accounts. The republic is safe.
The Greatest Burden: Fixing What Isn’t Broken
Fixing real problems is difficult. Fixing imaginary ones is far easier, and far more wasteful.
Rules like this drain time, staff attention, and credibility. Worst of all, they distract the agency from the issues actually hurting members:
But at least NCUA has now protected the nation from the nonexistent threat of ideological debanking.
Reputation Risk: It Exists (Even if NCUA Pretends Otherwise)
Reputation isn’t a theoretical construct. It is the currency of leadership.
It evaporates when leaders substitute ideology for competence.
It collapses when institutions forget who they serve.
It disappears when regulators look the other way, or worse, when they look inward and pass rules to restrain what they themselves might do.
If NCUA doubts that reputation risk is real, a previous post about NCUA’s morally incompetent General Counsel and Chief Ethics Officer has already written the case study for them: A Culture of Impunity, a chapter the agency should revisit with a box of tissues handy.
The Real Absurdity
This proposal doesn’t make the agency strong. It makes it look frightened. afraid of its own staff, its own judgment, and its own shadow. It solves a problem that does not exist, while ignoring several that are eating the system alive.
Proposing this in order to curry favor with ideological overseers does not enhance NCUA’s standing. It diminishes it. It invites laughter in all the wrong places.
A Modest Suggestion
If NCUA wants to improve its reputation, there is a simpler way than pretending reputation risk doesn’t exist: Let this rule die quietly. Slip it into a drawer. Close the drawer. Lose the key.
As Will Rogers, senior advised: “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
(first published Dec 4, 2025, updated May 1, 2026)
Yesterday’s post described the growing disconnect between member-owners’ needs and credit union leadership priorities. Solidarity Link was an innovative way to close this divide.
Today’s post describes CEO McNeil’s analysis for change and how this example might impact the movement.
From conversations with CEO McNeil, I learned this program resulted from a deep concern that credit unions had departed from their cooperative roots. She believes that the essential system support structure has declined from the early years of chartering and institutional buildout. Today many credit unions believe they achieved their present position on their own and that future visions are similarly theirs alone to determine.
Without a shared appreciation for and the influence of a cooperative system, individual coops with rich legacies of capital and assets, are able to strike out independently. Regardless of the consequences for the welfare of the whole network.
The decline of cooperative system thinking has enormous potential for everyone concerned about the sustainability of a unique credit union financial option. Solidarity Link is an attempt to address this challenge.
This program resulted from an analysis of how credit unions had departed from their cooperative roots, United Trades included, and how to reintroduce cooperative design as the touchstone of decisions.
Last year, about 15% of members were laid off. Others saw hours reduced or traveled across the country to stay employed. The response was Solidarity Link: a year-long commitment to use the credit union’s earnings not to maximize financial performance, but to prioritize member well-being. Low-cost loans, small-dollar relief, and targeted resources for members going through hardship.
Financial services are dominated by provider logic. Institutions doing things for consumers. That logic runs deep, even inside credit unions. This isn’t charity or corporate philanthropy. It’s members helping members, with the credit union as the intermediary mechanism.
That framing challenges the assumption that financial success must always be the primary proof point for performance. There were questions. A break-even year wasn’t what people expected. Holding cooperative logic alongside financial logic requires intention.
United Trades is purposively acting as more than a financial institution, accepting that they are also a social institution. Community support takes many forms, and goodwill is never wasted.
But a cooperative’s most authentic expression is not what it gives to its community from a position of strength. It is how it stands with its members inside the conditions they actually face. Responding to real circumstances with real tradeoffs. Accepting that in some years the bottom line looks different because that’s what the moment required. That’s not a departure from sound management. That’s what it means to be a cooperative.
Through April, 119 members have been helped with approximately $77,000 in total support deployed. Many aren’t asking for help yet. They want to know it’s there. Others are deepening their relationship with the credit union not because they need assistance, but because they want to support others.
What we are observing is members who see what their coop can be. It’s their money. They don’t want to exploit each other. Further, that the cooperative self-help value is working the way it was always meant to. ‘People Helping People’ always meant mutual responsibility.
Reinvigorating purpose requires creativity and courage. Daring to invest up to a year’s earnings to reinvent the members’ understanding and to solidify trust is audacious.
But there is an even greater insight driving this effort. We live at a time of uncertainty due to many external factors, events and individual circumstance. Many are fearful about what’s next.
I believe Solidarity Link gives individuals something more precious than financial assistance. It is giving hope. “Hope is lived when it comes alive, when we go outside of ourselves and in joy and pain take part in the lives of others.” (Theologian Jurgen Moltmann}
The initiative is already creating further interest within United Trades membership and from other union locals learning about the program. The United Trades team and sponsor are excited, engaged and challenged to identify new member-centered value.
Another lesson is the role of the leadership team. It is critical in developing a culture that supports this reinvention of cooperatives as both a social and financial force for good.
I believe this example could capture the imagination and interest of persons who have never joined a credit union. Or even explain what the difference might be. Now they can see it for themselves.
This leadership example reminds us of Albert Schweitzer’s observation: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
|
Garrison Keillor the creater of the Prairie Home Companion public radio show is still delivering his routine in one night stands around the country. He augments these live performances with occasional blogs and republishing The Writer’s Almanac prior daily broadcasts.
His observations about human behavior have meanng far beyond the Lake Wobgegon community. Recently he discussed how humor relies on personal delivery.
“Comedy is intimate. You poke them right, they laugh, it isn’t a conceptual problem. AI can create what sounds like jokes but they’re not funny. AI is going to take over banking and politics long before it takes over comedy.”
Following are two of his examoles of peole exchanging stories together::
“A cold day in Minnesota and the sign at the nudist camp was: We’re open but we’re clothed. And that led to one about the man who entered ten puns in a pun contest hoping one would win but no pun in ten did.” or,
“God calls him up and says, “The world is going to end in seven days.” And he tells Melania, “The bad news is that there is a God but the good news is that I won’t be impeached.”
The most vital cooperative advantage is the organization’s relationships with their members. It is the human connection not the number or amount of transactions that sustains an enterpreise.
Members know they can call and trust they will have a hearing while being being treaed as “kin folk” not just another customer.
Continuing to implement this difference, which evolved naturally in credit union’s founding years, is just as impotant to credit union union success now.
AI “manned” institutions may dominate financial transaction in the future, but AI cannot duplicated the cooperative adantage when fully embraced by a credit union’s leadership team.
But being a cooperative is not easy. As Keillor says everybody knows a joke or two, but only a small number in a group are real story tellers. For those who remember, consider how Bucky Sebastian brings life to any conversation. Ask him to tell how Ed Callahan went to the Burger King for lunch and asked for the quarter ounder special done his way!’
Tomorrow I will describe how a credit union is putting cooperative at the core of its business model. Like humor, it puts humans as the central story.
in anticipation of the required Annual Meeting, most credit union publish their reports for the prior year. Even NCUA issues a virtual document by Arpil 1 with audits and details of internal processes, albeit little about the state of the industry they were created to support.
How should these documents be evaluated? Are they only the financial stewardship of ;members’ resources similar to any other consumer financial choices? Or should there be an assessment of the cooperative dimension in their role with members?
I have been reviewing the 2025Annual Report and CEO presentation of a virtual Annual Meeting I wnat to attend this week. Here are some issues I would like to see discussed by the leaders:
An on the ground account following an election removing an authoritarian, corrupt leadership group. Caolin Robertson is an Irish born, national affairs reporter now living. in Ukraine. His knowledge of events and local production qualitt is first class. In this report he documents the sheer joy Hungary’s citizens felt after the national election ended the reign of Orban.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnPIWfECiNI)
An a nostalgic look back.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgCNOsSYP4I)
Two evenings ago I received an email from Scott Rose. This 25 year member of SAFE Credit Union had been prevented from speaking of his opposition to his credit union’s proposed merger with BECU. He had informed the leaders of his intention to speak at the annual meeting. Although the Chair recognized other members, he closed the meeting before allowing Scott to present his views even though aware of his intent.
Scott was infuriated. He disrupted the adjournment ploy, deeply angry and frustrated. He had prepared a thoughtful statement presenting his views on the proposed merger’s impact on the collective future of his 245,000 fellow member-owners.
His pain was real. It is the same deep emotion portrayed in David’s Psalm 52, The Deceitful Leader, opening stanza:
You cunning liar, why publicize your evil need to harm the good? Your slanderous tongue is razor sharp honed to fulfill malicious plans; You love the lie and hate the truth.
Following is the statement Scott wanted to deliver at the SAFE Annual meeting before being silenced by the Chair’s abrupt termination. Judge for yourself the gravity of the issues raised.
Chairman Blumenfeld, Board Members, CEO Nabhani, fellow attendees (Subheads Added)
As SAFE leadership is well aware, I have made clear my opposition to this ill-conceived transaction from Day 1. For those who do not know me, my name is Scott Rose and I have been a SAFE member for nearly 25 years. My sole interest today is to preserve SAFE Credit Union for future generations. I have no hidden agenda and no external financial interests.
The Board of Directors’ decision to terminate SAFE Credit Union’s 86 year old charter is a betrayal of our community. So is their plan to hand over all $4.4 billion in SAFE assets to Boeing Employees Credit Union.
The so-called “benefits” of this transaction, as cited earlier by Ms. Nabhani, pale in comparison to the irreparable losses that our community will endure if this deal goes through.
How can an organization seven times the size of SAFE possibly benefit our members and our communities?
For BECU, this deal is a gift. Free money! Who doesn’t like free? $4.4 billion in assets. $3.9 billion in member deposits! $400 million in member equity!
Why would our directors agree to such a lopsided transaction?
I have met with Ms. Nabhani on two separate occasions for a total of nearly five hours. During our discussions it became evident to me that SAFE leadership not only initiated and negotiated this merger in secret, but deliberately excluded any member participation.
Member opinions were not solicited, there were no surveys, and there was never any attempt to engage the membership. The sudden announcement of a merger last November caught every member by surprise.
What motivated our Board of Directors to pursue this deal remains a mystery to me. But what is obvious is that this board does not represent and cannot speak for the members.
Only three of the current directors were actual SAFE members when they were nominated and elected to the board. The other nine directors were not SAFE members in good standing, as required by SAFE bylaws, until just prior to their nominations. These actions deliberately circumvented SAFE bylaws with the clear intent to exclude actual SAFE members from participating in SAFE governance.
This fraudulent pattern of election manipulation has been occurring for more than a decade, and the current plan to terminate the SAFE Credit Union charter is a direct consequence of this corruption.
The pending consolidation of SAFE and BECU has drawn attention at the national level. BECU is now the fifth largest credit union in the country, and will become the fourth largest after the SAFE takeover. Many experts believe that credit union acquisitions like this will invite further scrutiny by regulators and accelerate recent congressional efforts to eliminate their tax-exempt status. But the truth is, if credit unions like BECU behave like banks, why should they be treated any differently?
Edward Filene was an entrepreneur who ran Filene’s department store from 1891 to 1928, but it was his pioneering effort to establish the credit union movement that is his most enduring achievement. Filene’s underlying philosophy was that a credit union is a member-owned cooperative that is legally and ethically obligated to act in the best interests of its members.
It is evident that SAFE leadership has chosen to disregard their fiduciary obligation to SAFE members by failing to act in their best interests.
On a separate subject, during my discussions with Ms. Nabhani, I noted that Beverly Anderson, current CEO of BECU, gained all of her financial experience as a commercial bank executive at Wells Fargo and American Express. This explains why she lacks an understanding of the cooperative credit union philosophy. Her professed motto of “people helping people” is a just cover for her true goal of expanding BECU’s market dominance by engaging in the same predatory behavior she perfected as a banker.
We have many huge commercial financial institutions and these are readily available to anyone who wants them. But those of us who truly support SAFE Credit Union want a local institution with Sacramento roots. We don’t need the likes of BECU invading our home turf and shutting down our credit union.
Thank you. (Subheads added)
This merger is a violation of every principle multiple generations invested to bring greater economic opportunity to the Sacramento community. This transaction converts members into victims of the very institution they built with their eight decades loyalty.
That is the cooperative way of always paying forward their legacy for the benefit of their children’s children
This transaction is a heartless betrayal motivated by greed. The CEO and Board signed a “definitive legal agreement” negotiated in secret with no member input, knowledge or involvement legally obligating this transfer of all SAFE’s resources-past, present and future. Then SAFE’s CEO issued a press release announcing the deal as all but done and providing no transparency of anything about the process.
There was no explanation why transferring all future operations to BECU was in members’ best interest. Or why the half dozen or more local California credit unions who would be more logical partners to expand member value and convenience were not approached. Nor what the CEO and board negotiated for themselves as the agents of this transfer.
This is not the free market at work. It is back office, private self-interested deal making to benefit insiders clothed in rhetorical promises without verifiable substance.
This is not economic freedom. Instead the 245,000 members’ financial relationships, the 800 employees’ jobs and all local investments are being transferred to the control of a leadership group that has no connection to, knowledge of, or experience in the Sacramento community. All $4.4 billion for free including $400 million member equity. The members are not owners, just customers to be bought and sold to whomever the Board chooses.
How Much Longer?
How long must members suffer in this current environment of private profiteering and community plundering of their mutual wealth and future well being?
This predatory destruction will continue as long as people of good will, courage and belief in cooperatives stay silent. For human greed has no limits. If the leaders of the movement don’t speak out, why should the public, regulators, legislators and loyal members care?
It is time for those who believe in democratic, not autocratic leadership of credit unions, to take a stand. Cooperative credit unions are an interdependent system. Seemingly individual actions will affect the future of all others.
It takes only a few to change the course of events, because that is how all revolutions against misuse of authority begin.
Place Scott’s speech in the public record, with the California Legislature, in the public media, in the Congressional Record. It is a stand made by a person of courage, principle and diligence. It should be in every league’s newsletter and given to every state and NCUA examiner by the credit union.
For if one member of conscience and sound judgment has the fortitude and bravery to stand up, surely those who believe in the principles of the cooperative option can follow his example. We call that democracy, a duty we all have if we want to really remain free.
An unusual poetic sensibility.
Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.
