NCUA data showed it had 33 branches and other locations as of June 30, reflecting no changes in the past year and all in the New York metro area.

President/CEO Brad Calhoun said about 348,000 to 349,000 of its members are in the greater New York metro area, or nearly 80% of them. The rest have drifted elsewhere by taking new jobs, retiring or otherwise pursuing happiness.

Its biggest out-of-state pocket is Florida, where it has about 12,000 to 13,000 members.

"There's a big strong northeast-to-Florida connection," he said. "We have a number of folks that call it a second home or that's where they are."

Calhoun said he expects Teachers to expand in Florida, possibly in Orlando, Miami or another city on the Gulf Coast that has pockets of members, and growing jobs and housing.

The credit union expects to open a few new branches each year, but Calhoun said he didn't know how many. One reason is that the credit union wants to learn from its Tampa opening, and change plans as needed.

"We want to work out any bugs," he said. "We have plenty of opportunity within Florida and we're taking our time."

Brad Calhoun

The same goes for other states, where its presence is mainly through the mortgage market.

Teachers has loan officers in New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

In 2019, 98% of Teachers' first mortgages and second lien residential loans were in the state of New York, according to data from the Home Loan Disclosure Act (HMDA). "We were predominantly doing a lot of our mortgages right here on Long Island," Calhoun said.

Florida was the second largest loan source at 1%, and the rest were scattered among New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina.

By 2021, New York had slipped to 96% of home loans, with Florida growing the fastest to 1.5%. And the number of states with home loans had grown from six in 2019 to 15 in 2021. As of this fall, Teachers was offering mortgages in 49 states plus Washington, D.C.

"The physical location is easier for people to grasp, but we've been growing over the last year and a half or so with our mortgage footprint, and that was really how we started," Calhoun said.

And, Calhoun added, it might expand by merger "if the right opportunity comes along."

Mergers were how this national story started.

Teachers acquired its open charter by acquiring all assets except taxi medallion loans from Melrose Credit Union of New York on Aug. 31, 2018. Four weeks later, it acquired the non-taxi loan assets of LOMTO Credit Union.

The NCUA had placed the two Queens credit unions in conservatorship in 2017 after heavy losses on commercial loans backed by taxi medallions, a license granted by New York and other cities that had value because they were a basis of regulating the trade.

When Uber, Lyft and other ride-share apps entered the market with little regulation and bypassing the medallion system, the value of those medallions plummeted. After the deal with Teachers, the NCUA later sold the taxi loans at a heavy loss.

Teachers' was the nation's 23rd-largest credit union in December 2017 with $5.8 billion in assets. A year later, after acquiring Melrose and LOMTO, its assets had risen 24% to $7.2 billion and its rank had risen to 21st.

"The acquisition of Melrose helped us further expand what we were doing and have a much wider reach with the open charter," Calhoun said.

Acquiring national ambitions sparked other changes.

Since the mid-1980s the credit union had sunk into the alphabet soup of acronyms. In 2020, it dropped "TFCU" and reverted to Teachers, redefining it as a broader tie to its role in the community and members, and underscoring it with a new slogan: "Smart for all."

"Our goal is to make sure that everyone understands that nuanced difference of the role we play as your financial partner, but that we are open to everyone. 'Smart for all' symbolizes that we're open to everyone across the nation," Calhoun said.

One reason for the change was that having become a national credit union, the name TFCU would now be overlapping with others. "The problem with that is that there are many TFCUs," Calhoun said.

For example, the TFCU acronym is currently used by Tinker Federal Credit Union of Oklahoma City ($5.9 billion in assets, 451,252 members), TrailNorth Federal Credit Union of Ticonderoga, N.Y. ($158.8 million in assets, 10,298 members) and Tongass FCU of Ketchikan, Alaska ($164.5 million in assets, 8,975 members).

Teachers' ranking as the 21st-largest credit union turned out to be a pre-pandemic high-water mark. Faster growth by others, especially in the past year, had dropped its rank to 29th by June 30.

But, again, Calhoun said Teachers is taking its time. Calhoun said the credit union has been building its infrastructure, especially its online capabilities, to become more of a national credit union.