Wisconsin's Thrivent Financial Bank, a $543 million thrift,remains primed to convert to a credit union, perhaps this year, theparent corporation said Wednesday.

The Appleton bank, part of a Minneapolis insurance andinvestment conglomerate serving Lutherans in the Upper Midwest, hassaid it wants to switch to a credit union to free itself of strict insuranceregulations under Dodd-Frank.

A spokesman for the conglomerate, Thrivent Financial forLutherans, said it is still waiting on approval by the regulatoryagencies on its application filed last fall.

In November, Thrivent noted that the bank itself had been formedin 2001 through the consolidation of three affiliated creditunions, a trust bank and a community bank and had chosen a thriftcharter because it was the most flexible.

“We are awaiting approval by NCUA, the Comptroller of theCurrency, Federal Reserve Board, FDIC and the Wisconsin InsuranceCommission on our proposed transition to a credit union,” thespokesman said. “We are not able to offer an estimated timeline forapproval at this point.”

Thrivent Financial CEO Todd Sipe said the bank began looking ata credit union charter during 2011, citing what he calledregulatory demands on insurance companies that own banks.

Sipe noted also that Thrivent Financial, a Fortune 500 firm thatoffers a range of insurance and banking products to 3 millionmembers, had previously been regulated by the Office of ThriftSupervision but that elimination of the OTS under Dodd-Frank hasmeant that thrift holding companies must now apply with the FederalReserve to become bank holding companies.