WASHINGTON – When it comes to credit unions and ATMs, statistics show CUs are in the best and worst of times. They are the best of times because credit union-owned ATM networks such as the CO-OP and Credit Union 24 continue robust growth and steady expansion of service.
They are the worst of times because, as the numbers show, a shocking 45% of credit unions still do not provide their members with an ATM, reducing their ability to compete and perhaps even survive as relevant financial institutions.
Some of those CUs not offering ATMs can probably afford to because they offer their members ATM access through network participation. But can network participation alone be enough to justify a CU not having at least one proprietary ATM?
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Even as the number of checks people use appears to drop steadily, cash persists as the leading way people pay for goods and services and as long as cash remains king credit union members are going to need, and want, to use ATMs.
When it comes to individual CUs and ATM deployments, the $13 billion State Employees' Credit Union in Raleigh, North Carolina, still continues to lead the way, blanketing the Tar Heel state with more than four times the number of ATMs of the other ATM leader, Navy Federal. And because SECU does not surcharge nonmembers at its ATMs, the CU manages to save all North Carolina residents and visitors, no matter whether they are CU members or not, tens of millions of dollars in fees each year.
Special attention in that list should be paid as well to the $86 million Actors Federal Credit Union, headquartered in Manhattan, only one of three CUs of less than a billion in assets which ranks in the Top 25 ATM deployers. Actors has chosen to make ATM access a central aspect of their member service and has managed to make itself one of the better known ATM brands in New York City.
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