While credit unions paying their directors is becoming more acceptable, the controversy of paying credit union directors persists, according to a December 23 story in The American Banker.
While federal credit unions cannot pay their directors, state chartered credit unions in a dozen states have the authority to pay their directors and that number should grow over time.
Ben Rogers, research director at Filene Research Institute in Madison, Wisconsin and author of the study on compensating credit union directors, told the American Banker: "I think if we had done the study 10 years ago people would have said compensating directors was absolutely against the ethos of credit unions, but today it is much more acceptable."
According to research by the Filene Research Institute (Filene), 145 credit unions in 12 states pay their board members with directors earning between $60 and $37,597 per year. The study said that in 2012 large credit unions paid four times more than smaller credit unions.
Click on this link to view average director pay by state.
The Filene study pointed out that there is a growing evidence of credit unions using compensation to attract and retain qualified board members given the heighten demands on credit union directors.
However, the article noted that paying directors may have policy implications with regard to the credit union industry's preferential tax treatment, as paying directors further erode the distinction between banks and credit unions.
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Have not read the research but if memory serves me,
ReplyDelete145 is about what it was 10 years ago.
Filene, conflicted by its dependence on credit unions, likely did not include how much the uncompensated directors are compensated via junkets.
Know of directors expensing $50,000+ per year and a true research piece would "dig" into that stat to come up with an overall total and average per CU and per director.
Those who make a living off the cornucopia of cu "conferences" would lynch Filene if they ran that by the media.
There are so many cues, CUNA, Nafcu, league, nascus,etc conferences every month for only one reason and it ain't "leranin", it's earnin".
With member's money.
That may be why, when aea was "returned to the members", the members replied resoundingly with a yawn. If they knew the real story, instead of "huh?", they might have said "keep it".