this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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I will start. I'm in the United States.
Credit unions! Nearly half of all Americans are credit union members. They don't seem to be popular in Europe and Asia. A credit union is a not-for-profit co-operative financial institution that essentially provides all the same services as a bank, except it's run as a democratic institution with directors elected by the customers instead of as a profit maximisation machine for shareholders.
They're common in Canada as well. In my experience, they're much better than larger banks for things like fees and interest rates.
Historically the main advantage of a larger bank was having banks and ATMs everywhere, but lots of CUs have formed mutual agreements for ATM access, and internet banking being ubiquitous has rendered any advantage the big banks have had moot (in my opinion, at least).
The biggest problem I've had with My credit union is there an ability to fix problems, and they're absolutely antiquated systems.
I went to Florida on vacation instantly tripped fraud. I had contacted them prior They put a note in my account because they had no other way to do anything. I tripped fraud on a Friday night and they were not able to answer a call from me until Monday morning.
A couple of years later I spent a few days in Niagara. The very first day I got up there I tripped fraud. I had already called them went through three different people to make sure there was nothing else I could do. I made sure that I didn't arrive on a Friday this time. My big problem now was that I was looking at an hour-long phone call and I was roaming. I drove up to one of the higher points in town and managed to get a US Tower. I got them to unlock me which worked for approximately one day.
Their web portal the last time I used it required me to have a 7 to 10 character password uppercase lowercase only. Tell me you're storing my data and securely without telling me your storing my data in securely.
You don't always end up with the best management by having the clientele pick the management. And sometimes those really low rates end up making you suffer on the security side of things.
Still the best interest rate I've ever gotten on a car loan and the entire staff was absolutely sweet, They were just entirely incapable of keeping my card working whenever I left the state.
I ended up going back to a larger bank. 24-hour fraud unlock hotline, also capable of unlocking me via a link in email as soon as it's tripped.
Apparently years later I find out that I possibly could have gotten by some of the fraud issues with the credit union if I would have used the card in debit mode. They apparently assume that a debit transaction is inherently secure. I have no idea if this actually works but if you're having trouble it's not a bad idea to try it. Just do at least one pin transaction every time you go to a different location.
Ah, that would definitely make a difference. A debit transaction uses some form of "password" like a PIN or the data embedded in a card chip. A credit transaction technically only relies on easily available data and sometimes a signature, much more common for fraud (it's pretty easy to read and replicate the data from a magnetic strip--one of my classmates did a project to read magnetic strips, and they had to stop letting people swipe their own cards on it because it popped up tons of confidential data).
My CU's website definitely looks like it's from the early naughts, but they at least kept things up to date and security practices seemed legit, and I don't think I ever tripped the fraud detector. I guess everyone's mileage will vary a bit.
Yeah, I just got the impression that everything they were using was a canned service. And whatever service they bought for fraud protection was either poorly serviced or they weren't properly trained on it.
The UK has building societies which sound like what you're describing
Yes, they're similar, but from what I've heard, most UK building societies are basically the same as or worse than banks in terms of fees, rates, and service quality. In the US, most credit unions will absolutely spank the big banks on at least two of those, if not all three.
The majority of UK building societies turned themselves into banks; maybe twenty years ago when the legislation was passed to enable it. A select few still exist though, but I donβt believe any are that large.
There's only really one big building society in the UK, which is Nationwide, but they're awesome
*had. They've been swallowed whole by the larger banks