Quō vādis, credit unions?
Jim Blaine on how credit unions can win…
by Robert McGarvey
In a wide ranging, 90 minute interview, retired State Employees’ Credit Union CEO Jim Blaine offered up a provocative look at possible tomorrows for the credit union movement.
The throughline is simply: Quō vādis? – Where are you going?
In 2000 there were over 10,000 credit unions. Now there’s a smidge over 5,000. That math is brutal. But it is fact.
This is where Blaine’s insights come in. His views are ultimately optimistic because what he sees is how a credit union can win. He knows a lot about that.
Blaine, who served as CEO from 1979 to 2016 of what became the nation’s second biggest credit union, grew the institution’s assets from $300 million to $33 billion. He left a strong foundation; SECU now has over $47 billion in assets.
And nowadays, when Blaine looks around the credit union universe, what he sees is a highly talented, youthful pool of c-suite credit union executives. They have a lot of tech smarts. That is good news. The bad news is this: “I wonder if many are looking at a credit union more as a business than as a cooperative.”
A commercial bank, bluntly put, is in business to profit its shareholders. Period. A cooperative, by virtue of that status, commits to seven cooperative principles that date back to the 1844 Rochdale cooperative. Among the principles: democratic member control; cooperation among cooperatives; concern for community.
Every US credit union is a cooperative, those principles are its principles. And they are also non-profits. Credit unions exist to benefit their members and their communities.
Nothing could be more different from those principles than a commercial bank’s bedrock purpose and, says Blaine, those differences are the building blocks that pave the way to credit union success.
Hear the CU2.0 podcast with Blaine here.