Bank of America has lost some of its market share to credit unions in Seattle. Since 2008, households in the Seattle area who bank primarily with credit unions have dramatically increased 6.5 percent.
"Wonderlane" via Flickr
Some battles are epic and eternal: BYU versus Utah. Paper versus plastic. Mary Ann versus Ginger. Banks versus credit unions.
That bank and credit union battle? A Seattle Times article by Gene Balk explained a "dramatic" shift in Seattle: "Twenty-eight percent of Seattle-area households bank primarily with a credit union now, up from 21.5 percent in 2008, according to market data firm Scarborough Research. That is a 30 percent jump in credit union banking, the ninth largest increase out of 96 metro areas around the nation."
In Seattle, credit unions passed by Bank of America and are now the top choice for banking. Chase took a 31 percent drop in customers since 2007-2008. Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank gained in share.
There are some hints to why there was a drop, perhaps, in a report from Adam O'Daniel at the Charlotte Business Journal. O'Daniel notes a drop in Bank of America's customer satisfaction ratings in Charlotte, N.C., to a new 10-year low. This, even though the bank is based in Charlotte.
"Bank of America, in particular, stands out as the only bank that is still below its pre-recession customer satisfaction level," Claes Fornell, founder of American Customer Satisfaction Index says in a statement. "It is clear that this is mostly because of fees. Customer satisfaction was probably set to deteriorate further as additional fees were in the making until a few weeks ago, when BoA backed away from the idea."
On the other hand, Bank of America says internal customer satisfaction scores are improving, O'Daniel reports.
A few local reports do not show who is winning on the bank versus credit union question, but a press release on CUInsight.com from Callahan & Associates says credit unions showed their "strongest ever loan performance" in the first three quarters of 2012: "(T)hird quarter 2012 performance data shows credit unions posted 4.2 percent loan growth. ... Credit unions in nearly every state in the country posted positive loan growth. This is in contrast to only two years ago, when nearly half the country posted negative loan growth."
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I am a staff writer for the Deseret News. My current beat is financial responsibility. I also occasionally write on other topics such as faith. I graduated from Arizona State University and from J. Reuben Clark Law School more ..
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I'm with a CU because it's all plain and simple. The services I want are there without microprint convoluted if-then-sneak-attack charges. I don't get a series of "pay me instead" letters from mystery outfits because my CU More..
CU - all day, every way.
Simple: My CU does not charge me a fee to access my money. I'm not even sure who still uses banks or why. Nor am I sure how banks are still in business.