This photo was taken at an MCU branch in the 1920s.An elite group of credit unions is growing silently every year.
You may call them the Century Club, credit unions that served five generations of members for 100 years or more.
The fall, Municipal Credit Union in New York City will officially join the Century Club that includes only 10 surviving credit unions this year.
The first credit union was the $941 million St. Mary’s Bank Credit Union in Manchester, N.H., followed in 1910 by the Industrial Credit Union (merged) and the $214 million St. Jean’s Credit Union in Lynn, Mass. In 1911, two more cooperatives were born: The $170 million Holyoke Credit Union in Holyoke, Mass., and the $16.9 million St. Anne Credit Union in New Bedford, Mass. In the subsequent years, more cooperatives opened such as the $1.2 billion Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union in Lowell, Mass., in 1912; the $785 million St. Mary’s Credit Union in Marlborough, Mass., in 1913 and the $1.4 billion Workers’ Credit Union in Fitchburg, Mass. Three credit unions opened in 1915: The $349 million City of Boston Credit Union, the $1.7 billion Navigant Credit Union in Smithfield, R.I., and the Financial Assurance Federal Credit Union in New Jersey (merged).
Next year, the $657 million Liberty Bay Credit Union in Braintree, Mass., will be celebrating its 100th anniversary.
Interestingly enough, MCU was founded out of concerns brought by John Purroy Mitchel, the youngest person to be elected mayor of New York City. He became alarmed about loan sharks charging obscene interest rates on money city workers were borrowing.
MCU Board Chair James Durrah said Mayor Mitchel heard from one of his aides about this new financial cooperative movement that was thriving in Europe and seemed to be taking hold in the U.S.
“So the mayor said, let’s look into it and see what happens,” Durrah said.
By Oct. 15, 1916, the Credit Union of Employees Conference Committee, City of New York was formed by 19 charter account holders who made total deposits of $570, the equivalent of $13,000 in 2016 dollars. Three years later the name was changed to Municipal Credit Union.
Despite numerous ominous challenges over the last 10 decades, including in its recent history a conservatorship, 9/11, SuperStorm Sandy and the Great Recession, MCU not only survived but managed to grow to $2.5 billion and more than 409,000 members.
Read how MCU overcame its challenges and took advantage of opportunities that helped it thrive in the Sept. 21, 2016 print edition of CU Times.
