Simpson: Credit unions fuel economy, telling their story is ‘huge opportunity’
As incoming President/CEO of America’s Credit Unions, Scott Simpson plans to bring the membership together to advance priorities and fight against banker attacks, as he told American Banker Wednesday. Simpson—who currently serves as president/CEO of the California Credit Union League and Nevada's Credit Unions and CEO of Utah's Credit Unions—will take his new position Nov. 3.
Credit unions have faced banker attacks throughout Simpson’s 22 years in the credit union movement, and he points to one clear reason why: Simply because credit unions exist as competitors to for-profit banks. That makes it vital to keep sharing credit unions’ power and mission to change lives.
“What we've always done is remind policymakers that there are 144 million Americans that chose to enter into a retail financial services relationship with a cooperative. And their lives are transformed by that relationship,” Simpson said. “They're allowed to keep more of their own money. And we know this—it's math. When you allow people to keep more of their money, the economy is fueled exponentially. And so if you score the credit union tax exemption roughly for every dollar that the government doesn't collect from our membership, it induces $10 in economic fuel.
“And you know, if you're in the business of trying to create economic prosperity in this country as a policymaker, that's a program I would authorize every year,” he added.
Noting that bank sales to credit unions represent approximately 40 transactions out of more than 2,000 bank-to-bank sales or mergers, he emphasized that “delivering context and understanding” to policymakers is how credit unions will fend off these attacks.
“We need our government to understand the impact that rulemaking and the regulatory environment and even the noble aspirations of government—what impact that really has on the street, on Main Street, in the homes of American consumers,” he said. “You've got sort of a one-size-fits-all application of regulation that comes down, and is a crushing load on financial institutions. And the smaller the institution, the smaller the credit union, the more intense that pressure is. And some of that is just flat unnecessary.”
Moving forward, Simpson is excited to make sure Americans who are not credit union members have opportunities to discover what a credit union is, and how one can change their lives for the better.
“We've got a great story to tell. It's unfolding. The cool part is, we've been delivering on it for 100 years, and there are hundreds of millions of people whose lives have been blessed because there was cooperative finance in this country,” he said.
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