Forbes ranks top Idaho credit unions for customer service

According to Forbes, the top five credit unions in Idaho for customer satisfaction range from small to large and local to multi-state. The youngest is a mere six and a half decades old. Only one is headquartered in the Treasure Valley while three are based out of Eastern Idaho. One is not even chartered in Idaho.

The rankings were issued during the last week of June by Forbes, one of the country’s three leading weekly business magazines. Forbes hired market research firm Statista to survey customer satisfaction across the country for both banks and credit unions. This is the third year that Forbes has ranked financial institutions that provide consumer banking services.

The survey sample size was more than 25,000 bank and credit union customers in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Customers were asked to rank their financial institutions on their overall recommendation, satisfaction, trust, terms and conditions, branch services, digital services and financial advice. Out of the country’s 5,236 credit unions, only 3.5% received rankings. Idaho has 45 credit unions registered with Idaho Department of Finance; one-ninth of these were included in the Forbes top five.

Starting with the highest-ranked, the top five Idaho credit unions in 2020 were: Connections Credit Union, Idaho Central Credit Union, Westmark Credit Union, CapEd Credit Union and Mountain American Credit Union.

Connections Credit Union

Connections Credit Union began life in 1937 as the Pocatello Credit Union, serving telephone company workers in Bannock County. It merged with Boise-based Idaho Advantage Credit Union in 2013, adopting Connections Credit Union as the name for the new entity. Membership is currently open to residents and families of those who live reside in Ada, Bannock, Bingham, Bonneville, Canyon, Cassia, Jefferson, Jerome, Lincoln, Minidoka and Twin Falls counties. The credit union also extends membership to businesses and other legal entities operating in those counties.

Connections CU has 10 branches in Boise, Firth, Heyburn, Idaho Falls, Inkom, Meridian Nampa, Pocatello and Twin Falls. Its revenue was $7.21 million in 2019 according to Dun & Bradstreet.

Idaho Central Credit Union

ICCU is number two in the Forbes ranking. With more than ver $5 billion in assets, it is also the largest financial institution chartered by the State of Idaho. Well-known for its “Green Team” branding, ICCU membership is open to most of the residents of both Washington and Idaho and of Jackpot, Nevada. That’s a far cry from its original membership base when it was founded in 1940 in Boise. At the time, ICCU was set up to serve the officers of other Idaho credit unions. In 1940, credit union officers could not belong to the same credit union where they worked.

According to Dun & Bradstreet, ICCU had $190.6 million in revenue for 2019. Today, the credit union is headquartered in Chubbuck. Most of the credit union’s 39 branches are located in Treasure Valley, Magic Valley, the I-15 corridor and the Coeur d’Alene area.

Westmark Credit Union

Westmark was founded in 1954 in Idaho Falls by employees of the ancestor of the Idaho National Laboratory, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s National Reactor Testing Station. Its original name was the Atomic Workers Credit Union. For the first 10 years of its existence, it operated out of the basements or houses of credit union members before opening its first office in Idaho Falls. Since then the operation has merged with four other small credit unions. It changed its name to Westmark Credit Union in 1987 to reflect its more diverse membership.

Today, Westmark has 15 branches in Blackfoot, Boise, Eagle, Idaho Falls, Meridian, Nampa, Rexburg, Rigby, Pocatello and Twin Falls. It had revenues of $33 million for 2019, according to Dun & Bradstreet.

CapEd Credit Union

CapEd Credit Union started life as the Boise Teachers Federal Credit Union, founded by 13 Boise school teachers in 1936. It is the oldest institution in the Forbes rankings for Idaho. After merging with the Meridian Teachers Credit Union in 1972, it changed its name to the Capital Educators Federal Credit Union. It merged with the Canyon Teachers Credit Union in 2005 and changed its name in 2008 to the CapEd Credit Union.

CapEd still maintains its strong affiliation to schools and the teaching profession, and all but one of its volunteer board of directors is an educator. Membership is open to those associated with teaching and education in much of the Treasure Valley and Magic Valley and to those who are members of the Idaho CapEd Foundation, which anyone can join for $20. The specifics of membership are listed on the CapEd website.

CapEd has 10 branches in Boise, Eagle, Kuna, Meridian, Nampa and Twin Falls. According to Dun & Bradstreet, its revenue in 2019 was $30 million.

Mountain America Credit Union

The fifth-ranked Idaho credit union in the Forbes satisfaction rankings isn’t an Idaho institution. Mountain America Credit Union is a federally-chartered credit union with its headquarters in the greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area. It is the second-largest credit union in Utah, the 13th-largest credit union in the country by membership and the 24th-largest by total assets.

Mountain America has ranked as the best U.S. Small Business Administration lender for credit unions by Callahan and Associates for the past 16 years. It is the leading credit union lender nationally in the CARES Act Payroll Protection Program, writing more than 7,000 loans with an average loan amount of $50,000.

As of February 2020, Mountain America Credit Union had $9.5 billion in assets, 890,000 members, and more than 95 branches in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. According to Dun & Bradstreet, the credit union had $412.5 million in revenue for 2019.