Arden Clise, GHCU’s Marketing Manager.

Even though I work for a wonderful credit union, I’m very sad WaMu bit the bullet and has been usurped by Chase. I am a former WaMu employee, and for 9 years I had the honor of helping to build its iconic brand. The loss of WaMu as the last large national bank headquartered in Seattle is a loss for all of us.

Even more sad is seeing Chase move in and wipe out what was left of WaMu – the School Savings program, major sponsorships and community grants that helped so many in this region, and the unique Occasio “stores,” as many of the branches were called. Instead Chase has brought us their East Coast style of banking with billboards that say things like “Let’s start banking better Washington.”

What Chase hopes you don’t find out is credit unions have been doing banking better for decades. When I left WaMu 3 ½ years ago to come to GHCU, it was because I liked what credit unions stand for – created by their members to serve their members, not-for-profit and owned by their members, not shareholders. They are local and care, I mean truly care, about their members.

I also was happily surprised to learn that credit unions work with each other to better serve their members. Credit unions created a Shared Branching network that allows our members to use other participating credit unions to do their banking business. This means we offer our members a network of over 5,500 branches across the country and internationally. Chase has 5,000 branches nationwide.

While I’m very sad WaMu and all the good they did for the community is gone, I love that I get to experience banking like it should be, like it was in the early WaMu friend-of-the-family days right here at GHCU.

Filed under: The Credit Union difference by Shannon