Credit Union Trivia
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100 free Credit Union trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free credit union trivia questions with answers. This credit union trivia quiz is made for staff meetings, member events, International Credit Union Day celebrations and anyone curious about the movement's history. It starts in 19th-century Germany with Schulze-Delitzsch and Raiffeisen, crosses to Quebec with Alphonse Desjardins and the caisse populaire, and lands in Manchester, New Hampshire, where St. Mary's Bank became America's first credit union in 1908. From there it covers Edward Filene and Roy Bergengren, the Massachusetts law of 1909, the Federal Credit Union Act of 1934, the birth of CUNA in Estes Park, the NCUA and its share insurance fund, the common bond and the 1998 Supreme Court fight, plus the biggest institutions today, from Navy Federal to the Desjardins Group. There are easy questions on what makes a credit union different from a bank and harder ones on dates, names and numbers. Every answer was checked against a reliable source.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who owns a credit union?
The depositors themselves
The depositors themselves own a credit union: every account holder is a member-owner, and it is the members, not outside shareholders or a parent company, who elect its board.
Q 02How are votes allocated when credit union members elect their board of directors?
One vote per member
One vote per member is the rule: a member holding only the minimum balance has the same say in electing the board as the biggest depositor, unlike a bank, where voting power follows stock ownership.
Q 03What is the credit union term for a savings deposit?
A share account
A share account is the credit union name for a basic savings deposit, because each deposit represents the member's ownership share; checking accounts are likewise called share draft accounts and CDs share certificates.
Q 04In several African countries, what is a credit union commonly called?
A SACCO
A SACCO, short for savings and credit co-operative organisation, is the usual name for a credit union in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; a stokvel is a South African informal savings club, not a licensed co-operative.
Q 05Which German pioneer merged two Saxony pilot projects in 1852 into the first urban credit unions?
Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch
Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, a judge and liberal politician, founded the urban Volksbanken (credit associations for artisans and shopkeepers) in the early 1850s; Raiffeisen later adapted the model for farming villages.
Q 06Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first rural credit union in 1864 in which town?
Heddesdorf
Heddesdorf, a Rhineland village later absorbed into Neuwied, is where Raiffeisen set up the Heddesdorfer Darlehnskassen-Verein in 1864; by his death in 1888 the model had spread to Italy, France and Austria.
Q 07What was Raiffeisen's job while he pioneered rural credit unions?
Mayor
Mayor of a succession of small Rhineland communities from 1845, Raiffeisen had left the Prussian army in 1843 because of an eye disease; failing health forced him to retire from office in 1865, aged 47.
Q 08What was credit union pioneer Alphonse Desjardins working as in 1897?
A parliamentary reporter
A parliamentary reporter: Desjardins took down House of Commons debates in Ottawa, and was spurred to act in 1897 on hearing of a Montrealer ordered to pay nearly $5,000 interest on a $150 loan.
Q 09What did Desjardins call the parish-based credit unions he developed for Quebec?
Caisses populaires
Caisses populaires was the name Desjardins gave them; he drew on European models but anchored each caisse in a Catholic parish, which supplied a ready-made community bond.
Q 10In which Quebec town did Desjardins found his first caisse populaire on December 6, 1900?
Lévis
Lévis, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec City, is where Desjardins founded the Caisse populaire de Lévis on December 6, 1900, the first of the movement's caisses.
Q 11The Desjardins Group holds what distinction in North America?
Largest federation of credit unions
Largest federation of credit unions in North America: the Desjardins Group unites the Quebec and Ontario caisses built on Alphonse Desjardins's model into one cooperative network with its own federation and insurance arm.
Q 12Which institution was the first credit union in the U.S.?
St. Mary's Bank of Manchester
French-speaking immigrants from Quebec founded it on November 24, 1908, with a personal visit from Desjardins to help.
Q 13Where did America's first credit union initially operate?
Q 21In what year did the U.S. Supreme Court side with banks against the NCUA's multiple-group membership policy?
1998
1998 was the year: the Supreme Court's NCUA v. First National Bank & Trust ruling came in February, and Congress reversed it within months with new legislation restoring multiple-group membership.
Q 22What does NCUA stand for?
National Credit Union Administration
National Credit Union Administration is the independent federal agency that charters, supervises and insures federal credit unions, making it the counterpart of the FDIC for banks.
Q 23In what year was the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund created?
1970
In the home of attorney Joseph Boivin
In the home of attorney Joseph Boivin: he volunteered both his house and his time, serving as the first manager, and the house was later turned into America's Credit Union Museum.
Q 14Which Boston department-store magnate is called the father of the U.S. credit union movement?
Edward Filene
Edward Filene, owner of the Filene's department store, lobbied for the earliest state credit union laws and paid for the Credit Union National Extension Bureau out of his own pocket.
Q 15Which state passed America's first comprehensive credit union law, in 1909?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts passed the Massachusetts Credit Union Act in 1909, the first general-purpose state law of its kind; its provisions later served as the template for the federal statute.
Q 16Whom did the movement's Boston benefactor hire in 1921 to run the Credit Union National Extension Bureau?
Roy Bergengren
Roy Bergengren, a lawyer and First World War veteran, ran the bureau from 1921, edited its magazine The Bridge and went on to become the first managing director of the Credit Union National Association.
Q 17In what year was the Federal Credit Union Act signed into law?
1934
1934: Franklin Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act on June 26 of that year, a Depression-era measure meant to make credit available to people of small means and to promote thrift.
Q 18What is the system called under which a credit union may hold a federal or state charter?
Dual chartering
Dual chartering means a credit union can organize under federal law, supervised by the NCUA, or under its own state's law; state-chartered credit unions may also opt into federal share insurance.
Q 19The Credit Union National Association was founded in which Colorado town?
Estes Park
Estes Park hosted the meeting, held weeks after the Federal Credit Union Act became law, at which state credit union leagues confederated into the Credit Union National Association.
Q 20The 1934 act limited membership to groups sharing what?
A common bond of occupation, association or community
A common bond of occupation, association or community was required of every federal credit union's members; the NCUA loosened that rule in the early 1980s to let one charter take in several unrelated groups, provoking the banking industry's lawsuit.
1970 saw Congress create the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, the same year the old Bureau of Federal Credit Unions gave way to the independent NCUA; the fund carries the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
Q 24How much share insurance does each member of a federally insured credit union have, at minimum?
$250,000
$250,000 per member per ownership category is the NCUSIF limit, raised from $100,000 during the 2008 financial crisis and made permanent by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, matching the FDIC's limit for banks.
Q 25How many members sit on the NCUA board?
Three
Three board members govern the NCUA, each appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to a staggered six-year term; the agency also runs the Central Liquidity Facility.
Q 26Which is the largest U.S. credit union by both assets and membership?
Navy Federal
Navy Federal, which began in 1933 as a credit union for Navy Department employees, is by a wide margin the largest U.S. credit union, with more than 10 million members and over $100 billion in assets.
Q 27In what year did the Navy Department employees' credit union become Navy Federal?
1954
It had been incorporated in 1933 for Navy Department employees in Washington, D.C., and received a federal charter in 1947 before the 1954 expansion to all Navy officers.
Q 28In U.S. cooperative finance, what is a 'corporate' as opposed to a 'natural-person' institution?
One that serves other credit unions
One that serves other credit unions: a corporate credit union provides clearing, investment and liquidity services to retail credit unions; the two largest, U.S. Central and WesCorp, were seized by the NCUA in March 2009.
Q 29In which month is International Credit Union Day celebrated each year?
October
October: International Credit Union Day has been marked on the third Thursday of October since 1948, when the Credit Union National Association established the annual observance.
Q 30In U.S. credit union regulation, what does a 'field of membership' define?
Who is eligible to join
Who is eligible to join is what a field of membership spells out; the NCUA approves each federal charter's field, whether it is defined by a shared employer, a membership organization or a home area.