By Frank J. Diekmann
“It’s your fault,” someone told me recently. “All those credit union mergers. They’re your fault.”
They were kidding. I think.
The comment came as a group of us were sitting around a table at a credit union event and one of those present happened to remark that her CU was in the process of merging in another. That, of course, turned the conversation toward the pace of consolidation in CUs, where once there were 20,000 financial co-ops in the land, and today that number is right around 5,000.
The person who was blaming me for the epidemic of mergers—again, jokingly, I believe—suggested it was the fault of CUToday.info, which has made a practice of reporting on each and every merger disclosure provided to members and filed with NCUA.
Our most recent report can be found here, and within that report you will find links to every other story we have reported on mergers during 2022. We will have at least one more before the year is over.
Mergers Love Company
This individual’s jesting suggestion was that, for lack of a better phrase, mergers love company, and that all the reporting was contributing to a belief by some (many?) that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Perhaps there is a little truth to that. But I don’t think so.
Having read each of those merger disclosure forms I can tell you there is no single factor at work. Many are small, and many are eating away at their capital with ongoing quarterly losses. Too many cite retirements and the lack of any successor. Inability to offer e-services is cited like a song’s refrain (a few of those that have merged this year didn’t even have a website). Between the lines you can sense many board members are tired and should have stepped down years (decades?) ago, with some saying they can’t find new volunteers (you have to wonder how hard, where, and to whom many looked).
And, of course, there are the occasional billion-dollar combos in which “efficiencies” are always mentioned, as is the ability to offer “more products and services,” even though precisely whichproducts and services are seldom mentioned.
No, there is much more at work than CUToday.info’s reporting. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.
One Thing That Needs to Remain Way ‘Yondr’
I recently shared here some observations from the massive Money 20/20 Show in Las Vegas, where more than 500 fintechs were on hand seeking to either partner with or knock off credit unions (and in some cases, both).
As I wrote, there was as much to fear as there was to emulate and find encouraging during the event, at which at least 11,000 people were packed like gondolas in a narrow canal inside the Venetian.
Before that meeting gets too far behind us, I wanted to point to one thing I hope credit unions will never use as a model.
Inside the vendor hall, which had a half-dozen stages and theaters for speaker presentations, there was a special curtained-off area called “Off the Record.” These were meant to be highly confidential presentations—and yes, I get it, Money 2020 gets to give the impression it’s letting attendees in on something so cutting edge and top secret, if you talk about it they have to kill you (or at least send you to the back of the buffet line).
Attendees had to place their cellphones inside Yondr cases, the fabric pouches that are equipped with a magnetic lock that activates once inside a designated smartphone free space and doesn’t reopen until you exit. To ensure nosy people like we pesky media types didn’t just stand on the other side of the curtain and eavesdrop, attendees could only hear the audio through headsets.
If It Belongs to the Members…
As I said, here’s to hoping we never see anything like this at credit union meetings. There shouldn’t be anything “off the record” in credit unions. The co-ops are democratically controlled, right? Isn’t that what CUs are always saying? “It’s the members’ money,” the trade groups recently stressed repeatedly when calling on NCUA to reduce its proposed budget.
It’s bad enough so many credit unions that acquire banks don’t disclose how much of their members’ capital is being spent on these deals—they should be required to—so, let me just say on the record—going off the record would be a stain on the white hats that can’t be washed out.
Swing & Sprint
One CU in announcing a recent fundraiser said in its press release that golfers had completed playing 18 rounds of golf during the day. Whatever the score, that’s impressive.
Hoosier Daddy?
I don’t know if it’s a first, but it’s certainly unusual, maybe even more unusual than 18 rounds of golf in a day.
The Indiana Credit Union League recently announced its board elections and new executive officers and all are female. In a CU community where DEI is on every meeting agenda, but where the boards of the associations running the meetings are often mostly made up of men (and it’s almost always White guys), it’s a rarely seen demographic.
For the record, the new table officers are Chairwoman Karen Madry of Afena FCU; Vice Chair Nina Baker of ProFed FCU; Board Secretary Cari Palmer of Energy Plus CU, and Treasurer Amy Sink of Interra CU.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief of CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info. Mr. Diekmann is also author of several new book, including the brand new “The Last Lyric,” a humorous satire about a murder investigation at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in which every line of dialogue is either a classic pop/rock song title or lyric. Available on Amazon, Apple iBook, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. Mr. Diekmann is also author of a non-fiction compilation of the very best & worst he has seen and heard in covering more than 500 CU meetings and conferences, “501 Name Tags: How Everything You Need to Know About Business Can Be Learned at a Conference & Forgotten in the Trade Show.” It is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Lulu, and Smashwords