Credit unions' next growth engine may already be on campuses

May 11, 2026

The credit union industry’s average member keeps getting older, and with age comes more saving, less borrowing, and eventually, accounts that close for good. Cisco Malpartida Smith believes the answer to that slow-motion sustainability crisis is hiding in plain sight on nearly every college campus in America.

“Every community has some form of higher education, whether it’s a community college, a small private school, or a state university,” said Smith, a 25-year credit union veteran who advises large credit unions nationwide on growth strategy. “If we could just tap into that, we’ve created our sustainability as an industry.”

Smith is not merely theorizing. He is personally leading or advising student-run credit union initiatives at Seattle University, George Washington University, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and recently helped advise a student-powered branch at Marist University in New York. His premise is straightforward: colleges are a pipeline of young people who are currently underbanked, soon to need every life-stage lending product a credit union offers, and far less expensive to reach than the 35-year-olds that big banks are spending hundreds of dollars per head to acquire.

Smith’s conviction traces back to a single moment. As an undergraduate and student body president at Seattle University, he interned in Washington, D.C., and visited Georgetown University. During a campus tour, he noticed a hand-lettered sign in the window of a glass-enclosed space in the student union building. It read: “How would you like to be CEO of a multimillion-dollar financial institution before you graduate?” In brackets below, it added: “And before your parents too.”

The sign belonged to the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union, chartered in 1983 and still entirely student-run today—from the CEO to the tellers. It holds roughly $15 million in assets and operates with 90 to 140 volunteer student interns at any given time. It is the largest student-run credit union in the world, and it changed the trajectory of Smith’s career.

He returned to Seattle University and rallied six local credit unions (including BECU, then the fourth largest in the country) to support a campus credit union. BECU hired him out of college to lead the strategy, and Smith has been in the movement ever since, holding leadership and strategy roles at credit unions ranging from $8 million to $29 billion in assets, including serving as CEO of two credit unions and chief strategy officer of GTE Financial, one of Florida’s largest. Cisco currently serves as the Fractional CEO at Tulane Loyola Federal Credit Union, a $16M credit union that serves Tulane University and Loyola University of New Orleans. In the coming year he expects to begin embedding the same philosophy of student leadership in a new hybrid model with both professional staff and student leadership and operations.

A spectrum of models

Smith draws a deliberate line between credit unions that are “student-run” and those that are merely “student-operated.” Plenty of credit unions have branches on college campuses with students behind the counter, he said, but those students are often “just tellers with a different badge” who hold no real authority. The initiatives he champions give students genuine leadership (C-suite titles, departmental management, strategic decision-making) because that is where the learning and the loyalty happen.

The models fall into two broad categories. The first is the independent charter, where students build a free-standing credit union from scratch. At Seattle University, the Seattle University Credit Union Initiative now has roughly 45 students organized into nine departments with a full C-suite. The initiative won the $20,000 grand prize at the university’s 2024 Harriet Stephenson Business Plan Competition and has raised $288,500 in commitments toward the approximately $500,000 the National Credit Union Administration informally requires before granting a new charter. At George Washington University, the George Washington University Credit Union Initiative has been working toward the same goal since 2017, with $350,000 to $400,000 raised and a board of experienced credit union professionals advising the student team. Smith serves as board chair for both.

The second model is what Smith calls the “hosted” approach: an established credit union provides the charter and financial backing while students take on meaningful operational and leadership roles. In February, Rebels CU branch opened on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus as a division of Hawaii-based Aloha Pacific Federal Credit Union. At Marist University in Poughkeepsie, New York, Marist Red Fox Financial launched in February 2025 as a student-powered branch of Hudson Valley Credit Union, an $8 billion institution. Smith helped in both partnerships. In his primary role as a managing director on the strategic advisory team at SRM (Strategic Resource Management, one of the largest independent advisory firms serving credit unions, with more than 1,000 financial institution clients over its 30-year history), he advises roughly a dozen large credit unions coast to coast on exactly this kind of growth strategy.

The business case for going younger

Smith argues that credit unions should be monitoring their average or median member age as a key performance indicator. If that number is above 52, he said, it is a warning sign. When older members eventually pass on, their wealth leaves with them because the next generation already banks somewhere else and never understood what a credit union was, Smith said.

The economics of reaching younger members on campus are compelling. Smith points out that large banks are spending heavily to acquire customers in mid-career. Campus engagement is far less competitive and far less expensive. While at GTE Financial in Tampa, Smith’s higher-education engagement strategy generated 25,000 new members in four years.

“We have literally this manufacturing plant of young professionals,” Smith said. “One day they’re low-income, underbanked students. The next, they’re college graduates needing their life stages of lending.” He notes that community college students are an especially overlooked opportunity: 92% of them stay in their local communities after graduation, becoming the welders, nurses, and tradespeople who are precisely the members credit unions were built to serve.

The benefits extend beyond membership numbers. Larger credit unions that support campus initiatives gain a pre-trained talent pipeline, brand visibility with a younger demographic, and natural referral paths for products a small student credit union will never offer, such as mortgages, business lending, and wealth management. Students who grow up inside a credit union, Smith said, are far more likely to stay in one.

A movement that’s spreading on its own

Smith's message is already resonating beyond his own projects. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a separate group of 30 students launched the Carolina CU Initiative in April 2025 and plans to submit its charter application with the NC Credit Union Division, and its insurance application to the NCUA this month. The team has raised roughly $200,000 in equity—with the largest donations coming from other credit unions—and is working to close the gap to the $500,000 capital threshold.

The motivation is personal. Wells Fargo, the university's sole banking partner, has left its on-campus location, and no not-for-profit financial institution that serves students in Chapel Hill. International students struggle to open accounts at traditional banks that require tax identification numbers, and lower-income and first-generation students often arrive without the credit history that wealthier peers built through a parent's credit card.

"We hope to provide services specific to those people—credit builder loans, ways for students to build up their credit, and have financial options that otherwise wouldn't be available to them," said Sarah Galdi, the initiative's vice president. The team is creating a guidebook of its entire chartering process to share with other universities interested in replicating the model.

If chartered, the Carolina CU Initiative would be the only student-run credit union at a public university in the country. It’s a distinction Galdi frames as opportunity, not obstacle. Public universities cannot write startup checks the way Georgetown and Penn did in the 1980s, but they serve far larger and more diverse student bodies. "It's less about it being harder," she said, "and more about it being more impactful."

The capital barrier and a counterpoint to consolidation

The single biggest obstacle to chartering a new credit union is capital. The NCUA does not publish a hard minimum, but Smith says the practical threshold is roughly $500,000 before the agency will feel comfortable granting a charter. Unlike bank investors, credit union donors receive no financial return. The motivation is purely mission-driven. The George Washington initiative has submitted five charter applications and received multiple deferrals, largely because of the “chicken and egg” problem: it is difficult to raise capital without a charter, and difficult to get a charter without capital.

Smith could accelerate the fundraising himself, but chooses not to. “The journey is part of the purpose,” he said. He wants students to experience the pitch, the preparation, and the practice of asking the credit union movement for support. The hosted model, meanwhile, offers a lower-barrier alternative for credit unions that want to engage campuses without the complexity of a de novo charter.

The broader industry backdrop gives Smith’s work added urgency. Credit unions continue to disappear through mergers at a steady pace, and he observes that inorganic growth now appears on nearly every strategic plan he encounters. “We’re either on the menu or looking for a menu,” he said. While he is careful not to oppose mergers outright, Smith worries that the movement risks losing its cooperative identity if organic growth and new charter creation are not prioritized alongside consolidation.  

An investment in the movement’s future

Smith took his message to a national audience this month as the keynote speaker at the Education Credit Union Council conference in Savannah, Georgia. His topic: outlining best practices for higher-education engagement. His appeal to credit union leaders is direct: even modest support (a capital contribution, advisory mentorship, or a willingness to host a student-run branch) can make a measurable difference.

“We have a phenomenal value proposition,” Smith said. “We’re perfect for financial education, for experiential learning, for building the next generation of members and leaders. The opportunity is there for the taking. We just have to lean into it.”  

Georgetown’s student-run credit union has been proving the model for 43 years. Smith is betting the rest of the industry is finally ready to pay attention. 

Gain more ideas around growing your credit union by reaching younger members with these posts: 

The credit union difference comes to life through your stories. Share how your credit union is making an impact on the industry or in your community. Email us at [email protected].

Tags
Member Experience Small CUs

Related Blogs