About Credit Unions

Credit unions were founded for humble reasons – to give people a place to save and a place to borrow at reasonable cost. Credit unions began as an idealistic, practical experiment with a simple concept – members pool their savings and lend to each other.

When the Federal Credit Union act was passed in 1934, credit unions grew rapidly across the country. The original act would allow federal credit unions to support member needs, and offered provisions for federal central credit unions to support federal and state credit unions.

On September 22, 1959, Congress formalized the role of central credit unions by amending the Federal Credit Union Act, “to establish a further market for securities of the United States and to make more available to people of small means credit for provident purposes through a national system of cooperative credit, thereby helping to stabilize the credit structure of the United States.”

Today, thousands of credit unions, which are democratically controlled financial cooperatives, serve millions of members worldwide.  Member service satisfaction is at the core of credit union success. Credit union founders had a motto, still used today, describing why credit unions were started – Not for profit, not for charity, but for service.