Big Little Lenders

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Other credit unions are aggressively swallowing smaller ones, aiming to gain the critical mass to become more like one-stop financial-service centers. Since 1995, Dallas-based Advancial has acquired 15,000 new members at 250 companies, including Perot Systems and Brinker International. Advancial's head of strategic development, Dave Selsky, courts companies whose employees have good credit ratings and steady jobs and turns down one-third of the firms that want to join. As a result of such policies, Advancial is rated one of the nation's safest credit unions.

Many credit unions are also marketing themselves, often for the first time, to dispel notions that they're exclusive to one company's employees. Despite its name, the Boeing Wichita credit union, with its permissive state charter, boasts many members among its 45,000 who are not Boeing employees but rather other workers and residents throughout its territory in eastern Kansas. Last fall the credit union rented billboards in the Wichita area to declare itself BETTER THAN YOUR BANK. In Minneapolis, Affinity Plus recently became an official sponsor of the Minnesota Twins to demonstrate to the community that it's available to just about anyone. "The Twins are a small-market team fighting the big boys, and we're the same," says Affinity CEO Kyle Markland, 39. Since 1997 when he took charge, membership has shot up from 70,000 to 113,000, and assets have doubled to $831 million.

Banks and other financial-service firms complain that credit unions hold an unfair edge. "We welcome competition, but we can't compete with the bigger credit unions that don't pay taxes," says Harley Bergmeyer, 61, chairman of Saline State Bank in Wilber, Neb., a rural institution with $81 million in assets. Banks have periodically filed lawsuits to prevent credit unions from expanding, to little avail, and have tried to stymie the loosening of federal restrictions on membership rules (also with scant success).

But such squabbles don't deter new customers like Sherry Lawson, 38, a nurse practitioner in Denver. When she wanted to roll over a retirement account, her bank was prepared to charge her $50 in fees, which she considered "outrageous." So she sent the money to her credit union, Bellco, which charged nothing. And, she says, "they were friendlier about it."