WASHINGTON — NCUA Chairman Kyle Hauptman told a federal interagency panel Friday that the new “Trump Accounts” initiative could become a powerful financial-literacy tool for young people, especially if credit unions are allowed to play a meaningful role in implementation and outreach.
Speaking to the Financial Literacy and Education Commission (FLEC), Hauptman said the accounts are well-designed from a behavioral-economics standpoint because they are simple to open through the tax-filing process and nudge families toward long-term saving and investing.
Hauptman highlighted what he called his favorite feature of the program: its ability to teach children about compound interest in a tangible way. He argued that seeing how a modest deposit at birth can grow over time could turn more ordinary Americans into investors and reshape how they think about wealth building.
The NCUA chair used the remarks to underscore credit unions’ existing track record in youth financial education, noting that more than half of federally insured credit unions already provide some form of financial education, with many offering workshops and counseling. He pointed to experiential programs such as “reality fairs” — including one 2025 collaboration in which 29 credit unions reached over 11,000 students — as well as in-school branches like Visions Credit Union’s Financial Wellness Centers, which train about 50 high-school interns annually.
Hauptman said NCUA is eager to explore how credit unions might participate in Trump Accounts going forward and praised FLEC for coordinating federal efforts around consumer education, especially as fraud and scams grow more sophisticated. He closed by saying continued collaboration will be essential to building durable financial confidence among the next generation of Americans.
This week America's Credit Unions reported that Treasury Secretary Bessent told lawmakers that community banks and credit unions will not be able to serve as Trump Account providers at launch because the program will begin with a single master custodian handling all accounts. However, he said this is temporary — account holders will later be able to move (“migrate”) their Trump Accounts to designated community institutions once the program is up and running.