Marketplace Radio: Relaxed Rules Spur CU Membership Growth

A story on NPR’s “Marketplace” program last night illustrated how credit unions have used ever-looser field of membership regulations to expand beyond their intended communities.

These lax membership rules have helped credit union membership to grow by almost 60 percent over the past 20 years.

The centerpiece of the story is what reporter Nancy Marshall-Genzer calls a “daisy chain” of members—a group of several young people in the D.C. suburbs with no military connection who became members of Navy Federal, the nation’s largest credit union with nearly $100 billion in assets and one with a stated mission of serving “the military community.” In this case, a four-person chain of successive roommates used Navy Federal’s household member loophole to become members.

Read the transcript.