A credit union is a not-for-profit financial institution owned and controlled by its members. It works in many ways like a bank by providing loans and holding deposits of customers, but members of credit unions are attracted to the generally lower fees, higher interest rates, and the ability to influence the organization. Historically, credit unions were not open to everyone, but rather limited to a certain group of people, such as employees of a company, a state department in a county, or a certain industry for example, but these restrictions loosened in recent years, and membership became available to larger groups of people. While the number of credit unions in the United States decreased, the number of members grew steadily in the last decade and reached over 135 million in 2022.
Which is the largest credit union in the United States?
There were over 4,700 credit unions in the U.S. in 2022 The largest one among them was Navy Federal Credit Union, which not only had the highest amount of total assets, but also the highest number of members, and customer deposits. Navy Federal was founded in 1933 as the credit union for the employees of the Navy Department of the District of Columbia. Today, the credit union is open to all employees of all branches of the military, veterans, and Department of Defense employees as well as their family members. The leading credit union’s total assets grew continuously in recent years, reaching 156 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.
The size of U.S. credit unions
Credit unions play an important role for consumer banking in the United States, as around one third of the country’s population has a credit union membership. The number of credit unions decreased each year since 2013, but the total assets of credit unions increased annually during the same period. This can be explained by the growing number of credit unions that manage assets of over one billion U.S. dollars. The value of credit union assets was around 2.17 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of 2022.
