ORNL FCU 75 Years
In 1987, while General Motors opened a new Saturn plant across the state in Spring Hill, ORNL Federal Credit Union launched its Auto Quote Service allowing members to shop for new cars on computers stationed in all branch offices. The transition to Digital Equipment’s VAX minicomputers helped slash individual transaction times. Deposits grew 7.6 percent and loans made to members grew by 13 percent. The year’s annual report noted it was remarkable that the credit union was able to accomplish this given the current business climate. “It is a difficult task to maintain a proper balance between rates we pay on savings and rates we charge on loans when market interest rates are changing so rapidly,” it stated. But even in this adverse environment, the credit union was able to attain an earnings level that was considered good. On its fortieth anniversary in 1988, loan volume at ORNL Federal Credit Union experienced a 23 percent increase in total loans outstanding, exceeding $118 million. Since its founding in 1948, ORNL FCU loaned more than $500 million to its members for homes, cars, boats, college educations, and countless other purposes. New branches were opened, bringing the total number to six. With almost a full year of operation behind them, the branches were showing steady growth in their number of transactions. In the bigger picture, the threat to credit unions’ tax-exempt status began to take shape, largely due to lobbying efforts from banks and other financial institution competitors. Like other credit unions, ORNL FCU encouraged their members to reach out to Congress and oppose this effort. Forty years after ORNL FCU began with ten founding members, their vision of a financial organization that would provide a good return on savings and low-cost loans to all who chose to belong was thriving. They could not have imagined that in such a brief period their $50 in assets would grow to nearly $200 million, and their numbers would grow from ten to over thirty-three thousand. Their action forty years prior had set into motion a force that provided financial assistance to thousands of people; it was growing with the community.
More growth was still to come.
44 | 75 YEARS ORNL FEDERAL CREDIT UNION
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