Local Credit Union Sees Surge on Bank Transfer Day

Saturday was the culmination of a national movement to get customers of larger corporate banks to invest in smaller community banks and credit unions instead. And while its scope was country-wide, its impact was felt locally.

It was called Bank Transfer Day, and it was started by a 27-year-old California art gallery owner named Kristen Christian. Outraged over Bank of America’s now-revoked plan to charge a monthly $5 debit card fee, Christian took to the Internet, choosing Nov. 5 (Guy Fawkes Day in Britain) as the day people across the country should remove their money from corporate banks.

The Bank Transfer Day Facebook page has more than 59,600 fans, and though it is not affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement (as it plainly states on its page), Christian’s idea has tapped into the same sense of dissatisfaction.

According to this AOL Daily Finance report, the Credit Union National Association reported that at least 650,000 new people had joined credit unions around the country since Sept. 29, bringing with them $4.5 billion in new deposits. While it remains to be seen whether the movement had any sweeping effect, one local credit union saw a significant uptick in new customers.

“It was not only this weekend, but the days leading up to it,” said Doug Williams, manager of the Montgomery branch of Earthmover Credit Union, on Ogden Avenue. “I started to notice it the week before. We got a lot of people calling and coming in, and quite a bit coming back to get accounts opened.”

While Williams said he doesn’t have an exact count of the new customers his branch signed up over the past week or so, he said traffic was definitely busier than usual, with people asking about the logistics of credit unions, and how their accounts would be handled. Credit unions like Earthmover are cooperative institutions owned and controlled by members.

Williams said management of Earthmover did inform the staff about Bank Transfer Day, and provided a small amount of training. But by the time Nov. 5 arrived, he said, everyone at the credit union was aware of it.

“I think it was very well received,” he said.

Though the movement also included smaller community banks, Griffin Leininger, manager of on Boulder Hill Pass in Boulder Hill, said he did not see the same surge of new customers.

“We did get a couple of new accounts, but nothing extremely out of the ordinary,” he said.

The manager of , on Douglas Road, declined to comment for this story.

Historically, credit unions have held about 7 percent of the country’s deposits, according to AOL Daily Finance, but officials at the Credit Union National Association expect that to increase as a result of Bank Transfer Day.