Community bank attacks are ‘height of hypocrisy’

Community banks publicly offer contradictory commentary, claiming to lawmakers there’s too much credit union competition while sharing the opposite viewpoint with their regulators. 
America’s Credit Unions President/CEO Jim Nussle outlined how community bankers are trying to remove credit unions as competitors by sharing two completely different stories in Tyfone Wednesday. The op-ed responds to an earlier banker op-ed in the publication and provides the actual data from community banks about who they view as competition. 

“According to the Conference of State Bank Supervisors’ Annual Survey of Community Banks, community banks overwhelmingly identify large banks and other community banks, not credit unions, as their primary competitors,” Nussle wrote, adding that community banks “can’t tell Congress that credit unions are invading their turf, then turn around and tell regulators that credit unions aren’t even on their radar. It’s not just inconsistent, it’s the height of hypocrisy.”

The actual data shows competition comes from the rapid consolidation of the banking industry, leading to the largest financial institutions dominating market share and absorbing smaller ones. 
Nussle noted that for-profit banks of all sizes abandon communities when the profit gets too small, while credit unions live their people-first mission every day, including through the ongoing federal government shutdown. 

Read the op-ed