Director compensation has been a divisive issue among American credit unions. To many, providing compensation to directors goes against not only tradition, but fundamental credit union philosophy. In 2015, the Clarkson Centre for Board Effectiveness and the Filene Research Institute set out to highlight key compensation trends in the nine American states that allowed director compensation. We found that even among credit unions that could pay their directors, most offered little or no compensation. However, compensation was more prevalent among larger credit unions.
Since 2015, five new states – New Jersey, North Dakota, Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon – have allowed some form of director compensation, bringing the total number of states that allow compensation to sixteen. Our latest report examines the state of director pay among American credit unions in 2018. As in 2015, we found that credit union compensation remains rare – only 15% of credit unions that can provide board compensation paid some fees to at least one director. The size of the credit union also still remains an important predictor of compensation adoption and the amount disbursed – most credit unions with paid boards had at least 100 million dollars in assets.
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