BIRMINGHAM, Ala./TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—If CUNA revisits its decision not to change its policy of automatic membership by a credit union in both CUNA and a state league, the trade association will need to address three distinct CU factions.
That is analysis from Patrick La Pine, president and CEO of the League of Southeastern Credit Unions and Affiliates, who thinks it is possible the CUNA board could revisit the matter at its December board meeting.
The issue of the association “choice”—changing the eight-decade-old policy of automatic membership by a credit union in both CUNA and a state league to instead provide the option to join one or the other–has become divisive in 2015. A number of leagues have adopted “choice” positions ever since the CUNA board opted in September not to accept recommendations made by a task force it assembled that just such a “choice” be given to credit unions.
“I think (CUNA CEO) Jim Nussle has teed up this issue as well as he can at this point. He said we need to pause and revisit this issue,” said La Pine, adding that it is possible Nussle brings a proposal to modernize the CUNA bylaws, including modernizing the membership structure for the leagues and CUNA, at the December meeting.
La Pine contends that Nussle will have to balance three potentially different membership buckets. “He has to try to change the CUNA bylaws to accomplish three different scenarios.”
One bucket is comprised of leagues that don’t want change, preferring the dual membership structure to remain in place.
“Then another bucket has the leagues that have come out in favor of choice, effective in 2016,” said La Pine, a member of the CUNA board whose own league has voted in favor of the choice option. “With this bucket Jim has to figure out how do we all coexist and continue to coordinate on advocacy in this new environment.”
The third bucket—the large “national CUs”—may be the most challenging.
“These are the very large credit unions that have a strong presence in several states that will only continue to grow,” said La Pine. “How do you create an affiliation mechanism for them? For example, how do you create an affiliation mechanism for Navy?”
The world’s largest credit union, Navy Federal, is based in Virginia but has an expanding and major presence in Florida, and is growing all across the country, pointed out La Pine.
“So how do you take a ‘national credit union’ and deal with the affiliation and dues structure for them?” said La Pine. “This is a credit union that not only is concerned about regulatory issues from Washington, but also issues in dozens of states across the country.
“So Jim is going to try to come up with something that takes into consideration all of those constituencies—and how do we bring all this together and be able to have a system where we can try to make everyone happy and also continue to make sure we have an integrated and interdependent advocacy function for the leagues and CUNA,” La Pine said.