Last week, America’s Credit Unions announced that it had at long last found its replacement for the current President and CEO of America’s Credit Unions, Jim Nussle, who is scheduled to retire this year, in Scott Simpson, CEO at California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues and the Utah Credit Union Association.
Simpson, set to take over the role from Nussle in November, released a statement three months ahead of his tenure to share his priorities for the organization and the industry as a whole. With decades of experience in advocacy efforts through his work with the leagues, it should come as no surprise that Simpson’s and ACU’s number one priority remains advocacy.
“What I absolutely heard [from the America’s Credit Unions Board] and I knew I would hear,” said Simpson in his interview with the CU Daily, “is that advocacy is the number one priority, along with keeping the family together. And keeping the family together requires making sure that everybody’s needs are met by their national association. That’s the trick.”
Simpson also expressed his and the organization’s commitment to supporting small credit unions, many of which feel overburdened by regulatory demands and often neglected by credit union resources in favor of larger institutions.
“I have enormous empathy for the weight they feel running their shops. They’ve got a regulatory environment that doesn’t contemplate their reality. So, I have a deep emotional connection to that. I’ve seen it…What’s amazing to me is that I had a conversation just yesterday with a very large credit union CEO who was deeply sincere about how to help smaller credit unions thrive. So, I think there is plenty of that in our space. I think we’ve got lots of resources at America’s Credit Unions. We’ve organized around that in the three states that I’m familiar with. I’ve seen it amongst my league peers,” said Simpson.
I know there are some sensitive feelings and I absolutely don’t discount those,” Simpson continued. “I think that’s mostly driven by the very lonely feeling of having the full weight of regulatory bodies like a state department of financial institutions or the NCUA having them under their thumbs. That’s where we can and should and will help.”
On the topic of sharing the credit union story and the struggle our movement faces in successfully doing so, Simpson lays the blame at the feet of regulatory requirements and credit unions not recognizing their own impact.
“[Credit unions] are under the full weight of being one of the most highly regulated industries in the country. They, too, are trying to efficiently deliver services to their members. I think part of our challenge is that credit unions are so close to their daily work. They have people come in through their branches or their apps or their drive-throughs—however they engage—with the automated, frictionless behavior we’ve been trying to create.
What we haven’t done is slowed down our transactional life enough as credit unions to watch the miracles that are happening because cooperative finance exists in this country…It’s just credit unions doing their job, delivering on the promise of not-for-profit cooperative finance. That happens every day. A teller or a loan officer provides a product that allows a mom to keep enough money to put shoes on their kids’ feet. We let those (stories) just walk out the door like it’s a normal event, and I think that’s part of it.”
“It’s not because we have a lack of those stories. It’s abundant. It happens every day,” Simpson concluded. “We just have to somehow figure out how to capture them and find the resources to amplify and accelerate those stories to catch up.”
Simpson officially takes his position of President and CEO of America’s Credit Unions on November 3rd.
