Illinois CU Aims to Help Members Rebuild Financial History

Great Lakes Credit Union in Bannockburn, Ill., has restructured its product and service fees to help save its members more than $1 million each year – a move that the credit union said it believes will assist members who want to build or rebuild their poor or limited financial history.

On Tuesday, GLCU ($1.2 billion in assets, 78,517 members) released a list of fee changes including the elimination of out-of-network ATM withdrawal fees, overdraft protection transfer fees, monthly Fresh Checking fees and issuance fees for replacement debit/ATM cards.

According to a statement from GLCU, the timing of the changes ensures “that its members have a little more money in their pockets each month, funds that are needed now more than ever as inflation surges to its highest rate in three decades.”

GLCU President/CEO Steve Bugg said, “At GLCU, we regularly review our fee structure and update our fee schedule accordingly. As part of our ongoing commitment to financially empower our members, especially those who are perpetually underserved in today’s financial landscape, we are removing and reducing a number of fees typically charged by other financial institutions as a way to invest back into our loyal members.

“We recognize that banking fees deal the strongest blow to vulnerable communities. In addition, many of these fees were utilized to offset the manual processing of the transactions and with our recent investments in technology and process improvements, we no longer need to charge fees for those items and in many cases, we also credited back the fees to members.”

Bugg added, “Ultimately, these fee changes will save our members a collective total of $1,103,414 each year.”