ICBA Announces 'Wake Up' Campaign to Battle Credit Unions
CU leaders react to the ICBA's efforts that include legislative and regulatory research, grassroots advocacy and resources that community banks can customize.
The Independent Community Bankers of America Monday announced a new campaign, “Wake Up” aimed at informing the public about the “risky practices, costly tax subsidies and irresponsibly lax oversight of the nation’s credit unions.”
The campaign provoked credit union trade groups, which issued pointed responses to the new effort.
“ICBA and the nation’s community banks are calling on Washington to stop pressing the snooze button and wake up to the risks of aggressive, growth-obsessed credit unions and the costs of their taxpayer-funded subsidies,” ICBA President/CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said, in announcing the new campaign “With credit unions abandoning their founding mission in the name of expansion and risky lending, it is long past time for Congress to level the playing field between community banks and credit unions while reining in the National Credit Union Administration’s expand-at-all-costs agenda.”
The ICBA said the effort will include legislative and regulatory research, grassroots advocacy and resources that community banks can customize.
And the ICBA invoked the taxi driver debacle in announcing the effort.
“On the heels of the NCUA’s failure to prevent irresponsible credit union lending abuses in the New York taxi medallion scandal, which led to financial ruin for thousands of families, now is the time for policymakers to finally re-examine the credit union industry’s tax and regulatory subsidies,” said ICBA Chairman Preston Kennedy, president and CEO of Zachary Bancshares Inc. in Zachary, La.
Earlier this year, the ICBA formed a task force to fight efforts by credit unions to purchase community banks.
Credit union trade groups quickly jumped on the ICBA’s campaign.
“This ‘campaign’ from ICBA is strangely misaligned and not pointed at their real problem – the big banks are eating the community banking industry’s lunch, said NACU President/CEO B. Dan Berger. “The only mission abandoned by anyone in the financial services industry has been by banks – including community banks – who have chosen to put profit over people when they should have prioritized giving their customers good, honest service.”
“Banking groups consistently devote valuable resources toward unwarranted attacks on a movement that prides itself on providing value and financial benefit to American consumers” CUNA Chief Advocacy Officer Ryan Donovan said. “This is not the first and it won’t be the last time the credit union mission and structure is brought into question. “
CUNA pointed out that banks had a 92.5% market share of all financial institution assets at the end of 2018 and that three banks—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo—have more assets than all 5,400 credit unions.