This Saturday, Portlanders may ‘move their money’

The Move Your Money project is a nonprofit organization leading a nationwide campaign to encourage individuals and groups alike to exercise their freedom of choice this Saturday and support local credit unions instead of national, for-profit banks.

Move Your Money chose Nov. 5—the day that commemorates the arrest of British folk hero Guy Fawkes—to be Bank Transfer Day. The organization is calling for people dissatisfied with their bank’s service to withdraw their money from large, corporate banks and open accounts with smaller community banks, also known as credit unions.

Grasping the possible repercussions of its new fee-based debit account policy, Bank of America announced Tuesday that it is abandoning the plan. Customers will not be charged a monthly $5 fee for debit card transactions.

Bank of America was the last of its peer institutions to back away from the policy. Whether eliminating the proposed debit account fee is enough to keep customers happy—only Saturday’s events will be able to tell.

The Move Your Money project, started by L.A. art gallery owner Kristen Christian, began as a Facebook page. Christian,a customer with Bank of America, was fed up with the mounting surcharges and transaction fees. She was also troubled by what she perceived to be the unethical business practices of the nation’s corporate financial institutions. She conceived of Bank Transfer Day as a way for frustrated customers take action and send a clear message of disapproval to the institutions in question.

In an interview with The Village Voice, Christian likened one person’s complaint to the sound of a cricket chirp, whereas thousands of voices raised together are harder to ignore.

Move Your Money has been associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests, likely because the two organizations have risen from the same populist sense of dissatisfaction, but they are separate entities.

Christian’s project has received nationwide coverage and has already achieved success in terms of spreading the word about Bank Transfer Day. The viral spread of Move Your Money’s message on Facebook, and the press that it has generated, has helped increase credit unions’ visibility.

Credit unions are not-for-profit cooperatives, owned and operated by their members, and they offer the same services as large banks. Because of their small scale—the average U.S. credit union held just $115 million in assets in 2008, compared to the $1.6 billion in assets held by the average U.S. bank, according to a 2009 report by the Credit Union National Association—credit unions spend less money on marketing than banks do, and consequently have a harder time getting their message out. However, thanks to Move Your Money and Bank Transfer Day, credit unions have lately received a lot of attention.

Laurie Kresl, vice president of planning and business development at Unitus Community Credit Union, said that “this is a unique time for credit unions.” She cannot recall a time before in which there has been such widespread curiosity about credit unions.

According to Kresl, Unitus’ website has counted a steep increase in the number of hits it has received in recent weeks, and their branches have seen increased traffic. Last week, Kresl said, Unitus saw the number of online applications more than double, from 40 to 114.

Before working at Unitus, Kresl worked at ING Financial Services—a global, for-profit banking institution. Kresl is careful to note that she does not disapprove of the for-profit model, but she does think that the increased awareness about credit unions is wholly a good thing.

“The credit union philosophy is about serving the members first,” Kresl said. Corporate banks, unlike credit unions, are beholden to stockholders—banks driven by profit motive must be at least partly distracted with keeping their stock prices high. Kresl says this difference places credit unions in a better position to serve their members and communities.

Students at PSU are responding to Move Your Money’s call for action.

Communication major Jason Lang moved his money from Washington Mutual to On Point Community Credit Union about eight years ago. He felt some relief when, in 2008, Chase Bank absorbed Washington Mutual. Lang is currently in the process of trying to convince his wife to move their joint account from Wells Fargo Bank to On Point.

Inertia, Lang said, has been the primary force keeping their money with Wells Fargo. Lang and his wife have been growing more and more dissatisfied with the service and the increasing surcharges over that last few years. He thinks there is hope that he and his wife will make the switch to On Point before Bank Transfer Day.

Senior English major Ari Diamond recently took her business from Chase to Unitus after discovering that Chase was holding a disquieting amount of personal information about her and her family.

Diamond visited a Chase location sometime over the summer to deposit a check, and during that visit, the agent she spoke with accidentally revealed that the bank was holding information about Diamond’s parents that extended back at least seven years. The information about Diamond’s family—which had somehow been included with her account—was not information that Diamond herself had provided them.

Diamond empathized with the agent. The agent was helpless to explain where this information had come from or why the bank had it on file.

“Chase is so big that nobody is accountable,” Diamondsaid. The source of the problem could not be traced. This, Diamond added, puts both their employees and customers in an uncomfortable position. Diamond felt relieved to close her account with Chase—her experience with Unitus has, thus far, been more comforting than her experience there.