This week is the annual credit union political Woodstock festival in the Nation’s Capital. There will be vendor halls filled with new and old names; speeches from industry leaders promoting unity and forecasting threats; praise from both sides of the congressional aisles; and non-stop breakfasts, lunches and receptions/dinners to catch up with peers.
Is it possible in this choreographed cacophony that the most important voice and movement issue may not addressed? The concern comes from 2,700 miles away, written by a longtime member-owner and printed in the local newspaper, the Sacramento BEE.
In this week of celebration I believe this person is raising the most important existential issue facing the movement-will anyone pay attention.
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article314780377.html
The Movement’s Critical Issue
The Bee opinion is a current example of the increasing frenzy of secretly initiated intra-industry acquisitions reshaping the unique structure and role of cooperatives.
The proposed SAFE-BECU combination takes the future away from their member-owners. It now rests in the control of self-appointed boards and management’s personal ambitions. Regulatory oversight is entirely absent.
The Context for this 2026 Endgame
Existential moments in credit union history are not new. In February of 1982 Chairman Ed Callahan, in his first speech to GAC, asked CUNA President Jim Williams the most critical issues facing credit unions. Jim used one word: “survival.”
At that time, the movement counted 20,784 credit unions with $72.3 billion in assets serving over 45 million members. Growth had stalled. Inflation with double digit interest rates and money market funds were taking away shares. Credit union expansion a forgotten dream, investments (GNMA 8’s) were way underwater, and losses were looming high.
Drawing on his five years overseeing the largest state charted system in Illinois, Callahan proposed a new policy following credit union principles of collaboration, self-help, local advantage and ever enhanced member-owner value. The resulting changes in NCUA institutional oversight and industry initiatives created a movement that not only survived but thrived,. The movement transformed to the market driven realities of open competition from the era of government issued licensing for protected financial franchises.
Today’s Threat Is Internal
Today the nation’s 4,200 credit unions manage $2.5 trillion in assets for over 140 million members with retained earnings approaching $285 billion. The NCUSIF is overfunded.
Unlike 1982, the system’s present danger is neither financial nor the various external warnings about fintech, stable coin options or other competitive innovation.
Today the existential end arises from two simultaneous practices. One is expanding efforts of self-destructive acquisitions of long-term large sound coops by their fellow credit unions. These efforts mimic the old fashioned capitalistic efforts to gain market dominance by takeovers, not competition.
As described in the BEE opinion editorial, the deals are done in secret with payouts and new roles negotiated by the principals, their advisors and then signed off routinely by regulators. No one represents or protects the member-owner’s rights and financial interests in these deals rife with conflicts of interest.
There is a second social and political factor at work. Today’s political ethos is the example of the strong, ambitious and single-minded pursuit of wealth and dominance, not democratic collaboration. Traditional credit union virtues of cooperation and sharing seem naïve. So leaders will bow their knees, compromise legacies of trust, to those in authority who in turn will stand aside as they pursue their goals of industry superiority.
The movement’s future has been steadily removed from member-owners’ hands through self-perpetuating boards and CEO turnover whose successors have no obligation to the legacy they now control. These changes of control transactions are now greased with payments in the millions of dollars from members’ common wealth.
Standing Up to Self Destruction
Can this increasing cooperative cannibalistic destruction be challenged.? As more and more leaders are caught up in what one observer calls the emotional urgency of FOMO risk, can credit unions’ unique purpose be revitalized?
Two sources of hope and example.
The first is a renewed vision and embrace of what success looks like as a coop. Here is a classic, timeless statement by a longtime, very successful CEO, now retired. The Ultimate Vision:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE_3-ipOiPE)
Will The Grassroots Rise Up?
The second factor must be the old fashioned calling that all Americans believe in democratic governance. It is not the rich, those in positions of power or the inheritors of wealth that control our future. But We the People.
Scott Rose, in his BEE opinion, is the example Doug Fecher said would be the test of credit unions’ ultimate success. Scott is sounding an alarm for his community’s future. His effort is the same that has animated the best of American patriots for 250 years. On behalf of his 245,000 fellow owners, the greater Sacramento community and the missing regulatory oversight, he is alerting all of us to this takeover of not just his credit union but the entire cooperative model.
His willingness to take a stand will create public awareness, debate and an uprising from the grassroots. For as he says, “member-owners, local leaders and potentially impacted community organizations must speak out. What is lost is not simply and accounting abstraction—it is real control of wealth. . . Once approved, a merger cannot be undone.”
Will someone at tonight’s Herb Wegner award festival dare to honor the voice of this member-owner who is calling all of us to remember who we are and what we stand for?
The challenge is both present and ageless. In words of the Bard’s most famous character:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.