WASHINGTON–The first-ever student-run credit union at George Washington University remains on track to open in early 2021.
The GWU Credit Union Initiative, a student-run nonprofit corporation that has been working to create a banking system for three years, is preparing to establish the credit union, according to the GW Hatchet.
Senior and CEO Sahil Pankhaniya told the Hatchet the Initiative has conducted almost 1,000 surveys over the past three years on undergraduate students’ financial concerns to learn how to help students bank cheaply, build credit and manage their finances.
“We’d like to have as many students as possible join the credit union, open accounts with us,” Pankhaniya told the Hatchet. “We’ve got great products, great services, great team of students that understand the needs of students. We’ve spent a lot of time surveying students to understand what students want.”
Effort Began in 2017
According to the Hatchet, Pankhaniya said he and two other students first began working on the credit union project in 2017, and went on to win $5,000 in the 2018 GW New Venture Competition plus an office space at a start-up incubator their freshman year. Since that time the credit union initiative team has since raised more than $690,000 in funds and committed deposits – an amount of money deposited once the credit union begins accepting students – from private donors and other credit unions, like SecurityPlus FCU, according to the Hatchet.
Pankhaniya said the raised funds will be used to cover filing fees, premium accounts such their website, banking fees and other capital requirements.
Twenty-one people are now involved in the project across a number of areas, and the group has also reached out to student finance organizations like GW Women in Business to recruit more female students.
‘The Hustle of Things’
“I think in the hustle of things, we did not make as good enough of an effort at the beginning to be diverse,” Pankhaniya told the Hatchet. “And that has changed dramatically.”
Organizers initially had planned to secure a charter from NCUA in May of 2020, but that was delayed after GWU announced in March that classes would remain online. It is now refiling the application with NCUA.
Sophomore Julian Daszkal, an analyst for the credit union, told the Hatchet the team has offered financial literacy workshops since 2018 to students, a program it has expanded into its own branch of the credit initiative.
“It’s the core values that our credit union initiative is striving for that has a purpose toward the community,” Daszkal said. “So we’re in the process of making a lot of presentation materials on and reaching out to various GW professors and faculty that can assist us in providing financial literacy programs to students.”
Senior Christian Trummer, the chief technology officer, said team’s main hurdle has been proving to the NCUA the organization can “soundly” operate the proposed credit union.