CUNA’s Nussle & NAFCU’s Berger Answer Questions About the Merger

On Aug. 1, the credit union industry learned of the historic announcement that CUNA and NAFCU were planning to merge. The combination of the two lobbying groups would form a new organization, America’s Credit Unions, if members from NAFCU and CUNA vote to approve the merger.

If the vote is successful, the new organization will be legally formed by January 2024.

Since the announcement, leaders and staff from CUNA and NAFCU have remained quiet publicly. Sources have said they wanted the news of the merger to be the initial focus while officials held internal town hall meetings for staff.

On Thursday, CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle and NAFCU President/CEO Dan Berger spoke publicly for the first time and answered questions during a 30-minute interview with CU Times. Both Nussle and Berger are traveling together and called in for the interview from the Defense Credit Union Council’s conference in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The following questions and answers have been edited for context and style.

CU Times: Since the announcement, what have you two been focused on?

Nussle: We’ve been spending quite a bit of time talking to our teams and understanding their thoughts, concerns, questions. The most important aspect of this for me will be the team I assemble, because if we don’t assemble a strong team, you can ask a lot of questions, you can say a lot of things about your value proposition, you can do a lot of things or try to do a lot of things, but you stand on the shoulders of your team. So that’s first and foremost.

We’ve invested a lot of time there for that reason, and that will continue. So, that’s what has been a lot of it. It’s also been fielding some good questions and initial comments from our members.

But of course, they’re interested in a lot of details that have not yet been completely worked out. I mean, this is brand new and we’re working on the big picture first. And so those are some of the things that I’ve been doing. It’s been a whirlwind week, but a but a good week.

Berger: Same on my end, Michael. We’ve met with staff and we’ve had a lot of conversations. Again, fielding a lot of phone calls and emails. From my standpoint, at least the conversation, I’ve heard overwhelming support for the merger, but there’s still a pocket out there that want hear some more information, and so that’ll be forthcoming with details to follow. But it’s been a busy week.

CU Times: Why merge now?

Berger: I think that it started with just a conversation with my Chair Tom DeWitt and then the CUNA’s Chair Brad Green just going, ‘Hey, let’s get together during GAC and talk about some opportunities so we can continue to develop relationships and network and collaborate and coordinate.’ And it just kind of stemmed from that.

There’s just a natural progression and discussion and then the reality came for a lot of folks, I think with the ongoing consolidation in our industry, Michael. I mean, when I started here, I guess it was 14 or 15,000 credit unions or something. And now there’s 4,700. The movement, the industry can’t afford two national trade associations. It’s just not a sustainable business model from a business sense. But more importantly, having one voice just makes a super powerful new trade association moving forward that can deal with the prudential regulators to, you know, to do battle on Capitol Hill. And so I think the opportunity just presented itself and the discussions just matured over the last few months.

CU Times: What questions have you heard from members who might be for or against the merger?

Berger: I haven’t got any specific questions. They just said they want to hear more, and they’re just going to wait and learn more, and wait for some more details to come out. I don’t know if Jim had any specific questions … you know, some of these folks are analytical and they’re waiting for more details to come, but nothing really specific on my end that I can tell you at this point. They, they may percolate up later and I’ll have a better grasp of it then, but this is relatively new, so no one has any real specific questions to me yet.

CU Times: Why change the name away from CUNA or NAFCU?

Nussle: When I went to the NAFCU team, and I said it to my CUNA team as well … one of the first things I told them, I said, ‘You need to be extremely proud of what you have built at NAFCU and what you’ve built at CUNA. We’re not asking you to walk away. We’re not asking you to just forget all about it.’ I mean, my goodness, today is our 89th anniversary of the meeting in Estes Park when credit union leaders got together to form the Credit Union National Association! We’re not going to forget where we came from. That’s part of both of our DNA. But the issue, the challenge is, how do we take that great history and build on even more amazing future. That’s the challenge.

Berger: Well, America’s Credit Unions was kind of the marching orders that were given to Jim and myself. This is not going to be CUNA 2.0. This is not going to be NAFCU 2.0. This is going to be a brand new trade association, a brand new powerhouse!

And so I think that was part of the decision making that the boards had as well: ‘Hey, we’re creating a brand new trade association and Jim is going to put together the best of the best from both and create this powerhouse.

I mean, it could have been merged into NAFCU or NAFCU merged into CUNA and saved the names and that kind of stuff. But they [the boards] intentionally came up with America’s Credit Unions because it’s a brand new trade association moving forward. And I’m excited for it. So I look forward to see it all come together.

CU Times will publish the full interview with Nussle and Berger in the August print issue of Credit Union Times.

Both Nussle and Berger said their members will begin voting on the merger by the end of August, and that voting will close sometime around Nov. 1 and the results will be announced shortly after.

CUNA and NAFCU have created information pages for members with questions about the merger. Those pages can be found here: CUNA Information Page; NAFCU Information Page.