We Will Never Out-Spend the Banks. We Can Out-Cooperate Them.

I doubled Bethpage every five years, through three market crises. So when I tell you a doubling by 2035 is achievable, I am not theorizing. But I have also learned exactly where it gets hard — and it is not where most people think.

I spent 22 years as the CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union. When I started, we were the 40th largest credit union in the country. When I finished, we were the 15th, and we had grown from under a billion dollars to nearly six. We doubled our assets roughly every five years, through 9/11, through Superstorm Sandy, through the 2008 crisis. So when I tell you that doubling the movement’s share by 2035 is achievable, I am not theorizing. I have done the doubling. But I have also learned exactly where it gets hard — and it is not where most people think.

The honest problem

The thing standing between credit unions and 20% is not member loyalty, and it is not the cooperative model. It is scale. JPMorgan Chase will spend more on technology this year than most credit unions hold in assets. That spending buys them AI, personalization, pricing engines, and fraud defenses that no single mid-sized credit union can match alone. Alone is the operative word. We have roughly 4,500 credit unions in this country, most of them too small to build what the next decade demands, all of them quietly competing with one another for the same members in the same markets. That fragmentation is the megabanks’ best friend.

The move others won’t say out loud

So let me say the thing that makes boardrooms uncomfortable. We do not need 4,500 credit unions all building their own version of the same thing and losing. We need them combining their scale — through CUSOs, through shared infrastructure, and yes, in some cases, through mergers — so that the movement can field the technology the banks field, at a cost no single institution could carry. A shared, credit-union-owned AI and data platform is not a nice-to-have. It is the only way the cooperative model competes in an AI decade.

What I learned building CUSOs

I helped form several CUSOs in my career, and I will tell you the truth about why most cooperation fails. It is not the technology and it is not the economics — those almost always pencil out. It fails because CEOs cannot get past the fear of giving something up. Control. Brand. The org chart. I understand it; I felt it. But I also watched what happened when we got past it: we built things together that none of us could have afforded alone, and every one of us came out larger, not smaller. Cooperation did not shrink Bethpage. It is part of how we doubled it.

The window

Here is what three market crises taught me. The window for a structural move is always open for a relatively brief period, and it is always open during disruption, not after it. The AI disruption is that window, right now. The credit unions that combine their scale in the next three years — that pool their data, share their platforms, and stop treating the credit union across town as the enemy — will be the ones with the cost base and the capability to take share for the rest of the decade. The ones that wait for certainty will be acquiring nothing and defending everything.

Twenty percent is a doubling, and I have learned that you do not double an institution — or a movement — by being cautious at the moment that rewards boldness. We will never out-spend the banks. Stop trying. We can out-cooperate them, and that is a game they are structurally incapable of playing. Carpe diem. This window will not stay open long.