By Ray Birch
ARLINGTON, Texas— At a time when many financial institutions are racing to become “digital first,” Texas Trust Credit Union is making a slightly more expensive—and more deliberately old-school—bet: in a sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth market dominated by big banks, it believes the future is not digital or branch, but both.
For Texas Trust CEO Jim Minge, that means treating digital as “table stakes” while continuing to invest heavily in human access—more branches, more phone support and more face-to-face advice for middle income consumers who still want help with a first car, a first home or a debt problem.
“You can’t have a digital product that’s not good, otherwise people aren’t going to stay with you,” Minge said. “But in our market, our differentiator is when a member has a problem and needs a little bit of help—they can call us or come in and talk to a real person.”
It is not the lowest-cost model, Minge acknowledged, but he argues it is the credit union’s clearest differentiator in a Metroplex of roughly seven million people where the largest banks control most of the market and increasingly steer customers toward appointment-only branches and lower-touch service.
In that environment, he said, Texas Trust is intentionally targeting moderate income households—roughly those earning between $50,000 and $150,000—who may still want advice and coaching around saving, borrowing, buying a first car or first home, or working through debt.
Numbers Support The Strategy
“It’s the traditional credit union model made a little more modern,” Minge said. “There are still a lot of people in this Metroplex that like the higher touch, and they’re not getting that many other places.”
That strategy is showing up in both growth and spending. Texas Trust said it ended 2025 with nearly 4% asset growth—its best performance since 2023—while posting double-digit gains in key direct lending categories. Minge said direct auto lending rose 34% last year, while credit cards and unsecured signature loans each increased roughly 15%, alongside nearly comparable direct membership growth.
The credit union has also been modernizing its digital side with Zelle, a revamped online account opening platform and instant decisioning for online loans, while continuing to add physical capacity, including a new Mansfield branch, a Fort Worth foothold through its Family 1st of Texas merger, and a planned $20-million renovation of Arlington’s Skymark Tower as its future headquarters.
Minge said Texas Trust’s internal math is straightforward: digital handles most routine transactions, but branches still produce the “better accounts”—the deeper, stickier relationships where staff can cross-sell and solve problems in real time. He estimated new accounts still skew about two-thirds in-branch versus one-third digital, even as everyday transaction volume is “very much digital.”
That matters, he said, because the credit union is trying to become more directly connected to members rather than relying as heavily on indirect channels. Texas Trust historically carried significant indirect auto lending, but Minge said the credit union has effectively gone on an “indirect diet,” keeping that portfolio roughly flat while shifting more emphasis—and capital—into direct consumer relationships.
“Our direct membership growth and our direct lending growth has been tremendous,” he said. “We want to become a more direct-to-consumer organization and find those consumers we can help.”
Tripled Branch Network
That helps explain why Texas Trust has tripled its branch network over roughly 15 years, moving from six offices to 21, even while building a dedicated digital member experience function to keep service consistent across channels. Minge said the credit union created that specialized digital oversight structure about three years ago because the channel was changing too quickly not to have executives focused on it every day.
The tradeoff is visible in profitability: Texas Trust’s return on assets has typically run about 20 to 30 basis points below industry averages because of the cost of carrying both models. Minge said the credit union’s ROA has recently run in the 60- to 70-basis-point range, versus roughly 80 to 100 basis points for the industry. But, he added, the board understands the tradeoff and does not expect Texas Trust to win on pure efficiency if the payoff is stronger long-term franchise growth.
“We are certainly not a low-cost model,” Minge said. “But we feel like our model is working for us.”
Financial data suggest the credit union has built real scale behind that strategy. NCUA Call Report data for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2025 show Texas Trust at roughly $2.04 billion in assets, about $1.51 billion in loans, and nearly $1.83 billion in shares and deposits, with approximately $81 million tied up in land, buildings and fixed assets— a tangible reminder that this is a credit union still investing materially in physical infrastructure while carrying a large consumer loan book.
The data also show roughly $210.7 million in total equity, or a net worth ratio a little above 10%, despite Texas Trust’s higher-cost, branch-inclusive strategy. Its loan-to-share ratio sits in the low 80% range—right around where the broader credit union system finished 2025—indicating the institution is not sacrificing balance-sheet discipline while it pushes direct growth.
Texas Trust said it entered 2026 serving more than 135,000 members, ranking as the seventh-largest credit union in North Texas and 18th-largest in Texas, and it says the hybrid model is also supporting its broader franchise story. Its foundation topped $1 million in cumulative giving since 2019, including $331,571 in grants, scholarships and nonprofit support in 2025 alone, while employees logged a record 2,271 volunteer hours last year.
For Minge, that is part of the same strategy, not a side note: in a market where the biggest banks can likely outspend almost anyone on digital, Texas Trust is trying to win by pairing modern tools with something harder to replicate—convenience when members want speed, and access to a real person when life gets complicated.
“If you try to be all things to all people, you’re not going to be successful,” Minge said. “We know who we’re trying to serve.”