SECU is different!
Recognize the quote and Michael Douglas from the movie "Wall Street"?
Douglas starring convincingly, as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street profiteer extraordinaire, opined: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. It captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upsurge of mankind."
Maybe so, probably not; but why bring this up? Because "profiteering" appears to be a growing, unseemly trend among credit unions and their "Legacy 8-type Boards" espousing "Gekko-wannabee" leadership. Keep hoping that this problem is simply a misunderstanding of the purpose and structure of credit unions - some sort of "institutional ignorance virus", but it is beginning to appear pandemic.
If you look back at Chapter 4 [link] and Chapter 5 [link], it is clear that credit unions were purposefully established as not-for-profit cooperatives. Unfortunately, there are some "anonymouse" commenters, who can't seem to grasp that fact. It's as though they have eaten their ice cream a little too fast and are suffering from an "Economics 101 brain freeze" - for a few, it may be something more permanent.
😎 Lets ask those naysayers the big question! But first to be clear, a for-profit business - of all stripes - over time, generally ends up with three "constituencies", three interested parties - 1) the investors (owners), 2) the employees, and 3) the customers. The brain-frigid anonymice claim that the sole purpose of a business is to make a profit for the investor-owners (ala Gekko and perhaps Milton Friedman). Which to make that "cold-hearted thinking" explicitly clear, that means the interests of the employees and the customers come second - often a distant second - to the interests of the "in it for the profit" investor. Okay, I guess... if you can face the Gekko (or "gecko", a carnivorous lizard - you did get that, right?) in your mirror each morning and live with that.
On the other hand, a credit union only has two constituencies: 1) the member-owners and 2) the employees. In a credit union there are no separate "in it for the profit" investors, there are no separate "customers" (although we acknowledged that many members don't know that - "the Kleenex dilemma"). Credit union member-owners don't expect to profit or gain through an appreciation in their share accounts - as opposed to investor-owned, bank stock . Credit union members receive their "return on investment" through lower loan rates, higher savings rates, fewer fees, better quality service.
Last year at the SECU Annual Meeting, the CEO proudly bragged (un-apologetically!), with the Board beaming in "cool, icy" agreement, that the Credit Union had made a record "profit" of $587 million in fiscal year 2023 (topping the prior record $563 million in 2022).
😎 So here's the $587 million question for the SECU Board: In a year when SECU owners were paid non-market rates on their shares, fees and loan rates uniformly rose, and the quality of service appeared in decline:
✅ "How did Credit Union member-owners "profit" by owning and investing in SECU last year? If the member-owners didn't "profit", who did? **
** (... and for the "brain-frozen anonymousers", can we at least agree that for the member-owners; SECU has been a "non-profit" for the last 3 years?)
... BTW, the SECU employees in the trenches claim: "It wasn't us!"
