Thursday, December 12, 2024

Report finds credit unions lacking on mission to serve low-income households

As a follow up to Tuesday’s OBA Update, we wanted to make sure our bankers took note of the new study that found credit unions fall short of their mission to serve low-income or “small-means” households.

Credit unions enjoy many benefits, most notably a federal tax exemption. Many of these benefits stem from the original mission of credit unions to serve households of “small-means.”

A recent report from the Federal Financial Analytics firm found the National Credit Union Administration maintains no data on credit unions’ effective at providing financial services to people of “small means” and its definition of “low-income” is far more expansive than used by other federal agencies.

You can read the report by Federal Financial Analytics by clicking here and the firm’s news release concerning the report by clicking here.

The POLITICO news site also wrote a story about the report, which can be read here (subscriber access needed).