How One Person Is Helping CUs Clean Up the Taxi Medallion Mess

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Following a successful taxi industry career that spanned more than four decades, Robert Schlageter was enjoying retirement when he read about the New York state regulator placing Melrose Credit Union under NCUA conservatorship in February 2017 after the New York financial cooperative posted hundreds of millions of dollars in taxi medallion losses.

Many taxi medallion loans were underwater because drivers lost much of their business to the highly popular ride sharing services. In addition to Melrose, other credit unions with large taxi medallion portfolios, and credit unions across the nation that held taxi medallion participation loans, also lost tens of millions more. The mounting losses forced some credit unions out of business while others were merged out of existence.