Ancin Cooley is a consultant who presents truth, not what you necessarliy want to hear. He writes with both experience and wisdom.
This recent blog should be posted in the employee lounge of every credit union office. Mergers of well run credit unions not only destroy an organically created local financial institution. They will end employees’ investment in their own professional future. Here is his analysis of the impact of mergers on employees of surrendered charters.
How Credit Union Mergers Rob 💰 the Next Generation 🧑🧑🧒🧒 of What Was Freely Given to the Last (Attention!!! hashtagMillennials and hashtagGenZ)
The consolidation cheerleaders talk about member impact, technology investments, and competitive positioning.
The executives advocating loudest for mergers? They built careers in an industry that had room for them. They were given opportunities for hashtagCEO, hashtagCFO, and hashtagCLO roles at shops, and VP positions at institutions that no longer exist because they’ve since been absorbed. Those jobs paid 🏡 mortgages, put kids through 🚸 college, and built retirements.
The Ladder They Climbed Is Being Pulled Up Behind Them
Every merger eliminates leadership positions—CEO, CFO, CLO, and VPs. Two credit unions become one, and half the top roles vanish.
For early-career workers, this means fewer rungs up the corporate ladder to reach for. The CEO role at that $350 million credit union that could have been theirs in fifteen years? Absorbed into a $1 billion merger. Gone. “Good luck bud…”
For mid-career professionals who’ve spent a decade building expertise, the chair they were positioning for no longer exists. They did everything right.
The “Efficiencies” Folks Celebrate Are Your Career and Your Money
When merger advocates toast economies of scale and eliminated redundancies, translate that: they’re toasting eliminated people.
Early-career workers lose the broad exposure that builds future executives. The young professional at a $200 million credit union who might touch lending, compliance, member service, and strategy? At the merged $3 billion institution, they’re a specialist in a silo, building narrow skills with no line of sight to leadership.
Mid-career professionals find their expertise deemed “redundant” when two departments become one. One compliance officer survives. One lending director. One marketing lead. Senior professionals get offered early retirement packages or the dignity of reporting to someone who was their peer last quarter.
The Mission Is Being Sold Off by People It Already Paid
Many younger workers chose credit unions over banks because they wanted work that meant something. The idea that finance could serve people rather than extract from them. Now they watch executives who built wealth and reputation on cooperative principles abandon those principles for scale and extraction. The same leaders who gave conference speeches about “people helping people” or “Main Street Values” now give conference speeches about “competitive positioning” and “Market Forces.”
To the Millennials, Gen Z, and future Gen Alpha workers in this movement: the path is narrower than it should be. And they owe you more than a picture with a politician and the ability to “crash” an event. But the mission that drew you here is still worth fighting for, and you might be the generation that reclaims and rebuilds it.