Relatively Few Midwest CUs Offer IDAs, Report Finds

CHICAGO – Only 14 of the 69 financial institutions in the Seventh District of the Federal Reserve that offer Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are credit unions, according to a recent paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. IDAs are accounts that help lower income people build assets toward specific goals, such as home ownership, education and starting small businesses. Usually the government or a private donor matches the account holder’s deposits. Katy Jacob, communications associate with the Chicago-based Woodside Institute, said she was surprised to hear that so few credit unions in the five-state district offer IDAs, but that she understood why they might not. “I think IDAs are expensive to administer,” she said, “so I can understand why smaller financial institutions, like credit unions, might not be able to offer them.” But she also pointed out that there are many area groups with which to partner that could help credit unions cut the cost of IDA accounts. The Woodstock Institute has been critical in the past of credit union performance serving lower income people. The report, Financial Institutions as Stakeholders in Individual Development Accounts, found that 80% of the district’s banks that offer IDAs had done so since 1998. Seventy percent of the credit unions that do so have offered the accounts since the year 2000. The report also found that most of the institutions that offered IDAs were not specifically targeted at low-income households. “The majority of institutions in the sample have no explicit community development mandate-they are full-service financial institutions that provide a range of traditional banking services,” the report said. Sixty-three percent of the sixty-nine institutions adopt a strategy of designating branches which offer the accounts, either close to where the majority of account holders live or near an organization that also sponsors the accounts. Interestingly, 6% of the banks that offer IDAs and 21% of the credit unions said they offered the accounts solely in order to cross sell other products to the account holders, the report found. The most common other products for banks are checking accounts and money orders. Three credit unions mention offering secured loans to build a credit history.