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
Members elect the board on a one-person-one-vote basis regardless of how much they have deposited, which is the core difference from a bank.
Q 02How are votes allocated when credit union members elect their board of directors?
One vote per member
That democratic structure is why credit unions describe their mission as 'serve people, not profit.'
Q 03What is the credit union term for a savings deposit?
A share account
Checking accounts are share draft accounts and CDs are share term certificates, reflecting the fact that depositors are part-owners.
Q 04In several African countries, what is a credit union commonly called?
A SACCO
It stands for savings and credit co-operative. Kenya alone has more than five million credit union members.
Q 05Which German pioneer merged two Saxony pilot projects in 1852 into the world's first credit unions?
Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch
His urban 'people's banks' served artisans and shopkeepers. Raiffeisen adapted the idea for rural villages a decade later.
Q 06Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first rural credit union in 1864 in which town?
Heddesdorf
Raiffeisen was the town's mayor. By his death in 1888 credit unions had spread to Italy, France, the Netherlands, England and Austria, and many cooperative banks still bear his name.
Q 07What was Raiffeisen's job while he pioneered rural credit unions?
Mayor
He left the military because of an eye disease and served as mayor of Weyerbusch, Flammersfeld and Heddesdorf before ill health ended his career at 47.
Q 08What was credit union pioneer Alphonse Desjardins working as in 1897?
A parliamentary reporter
He was outraged to learn a Montrealer had been ordered to pay nearly $5,000 in interest on a $150 loan from a moneylender.
Q 09What did Desjardins call the parish-based credit unions he developed for Quebec?
Caisses populaires
He drew heavily on European models but built his around the Catholic parish, which gave the movement a ready-made community bond.
Q 10In which Quebec town did Desjardins found his first caisse populaire on December 6, 1900?
Lévis
The Desjardins Group's legal headquarters remain there today, though most executives are based in Montreal.
Q 11The Desjardins Group holds what distinction in North America?
Largest federation of credit unions
In 2008, Monique Leroux's election as its head made it the largest Canadian company led by a woman.
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?
In the home of attorney Joseph Boivin
Q 21In what year did the U.S. Supreme Court side with banks against the NCUA's multiple-group membership policy?
1998
Congress responded within months by passing the Credit Union Membership Access Act, restoring the ability to serve multiple groups.
Q 22What does NCUA stand for?
National Credit Union Administration
It is the independent federal agency that charters, supervises and insures federal credit unions, the counterpart of the FDIC for banks.
Q 23In what year was the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund created?
1970
Its creation is also when the old Bureau of Federal Credit Unions was renamed the NCUA. The fund is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
Boivin volunteered his time and house as the first branch. The building became America's Credit Union Museum in 2002 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Q 14Which Boston department-store magnate is called the father of the U.S. credit union movement?
Edward Filene
Filene worked with Massachusetts banking commissioner Pierre Jay on the 1909 state law and bankrolled the national extension effort out of his own pocket.
Q 15Which state passed America's first comprehensive credit union law, in 1909?
Massachusetts
Its general provisions became the template for the Federal Credit Union Act a quarter-century later.
Q 16Whom did the movement's Boston benefactor hire in 1921 to run the Credit Union National Extension Bureau?
Roy Bergengren
Bergengren, a dissatisfied poverty lawyer and World War I veteran, edited the bureau's magazine The Bridge and helped found thousands of credit unions.
Q 17In what year was the Federal Credit Union Act signed into law?
1934
Franklin Roosevelt signed it during the Depression to make credit available and promote thrift. It created the Bureau of Federal Credit Unions, the NCUA's predecessor.
Q 18What is the system called under which a credit union may hold a federal or state charter?
Dual chartering
Both routes have coexisted since the 1934 act, and state-chartered credit unions can opt into federal share insurance.
Q 19The forerunner of the Credit Union National Association formed in 1934 in which Colorado town?
Estes Park
State leagues confederated there weeks after the federal act passed. CUNA merged with NAFCU in 2024 to form America's Credit Unions.
Q 20The 1934 act limited membership to groups sharing what?
A common bond of occupation, association or community
That 'common bond' rule was loosened by a 1982 NCUA ruling that let credit unions add multiple groups, setting up a legal fight with the banks.
Q 24How much share insurance does each member of a federally insured credit union have, at minimum?
$250,000
All federal credit unions and about 95 percent of state-chartered ones carry NCUSIF coverage, matching the FDIC limit for banks.
Q 25How many members sit on the NCUA board?
Three
They are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The agency also runs the Central Liquidity Facility and a community development loan fund.
Q 26Which is the largest U.S. credit union by both assets and membership?
Navy Federal
Headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, it reported $197.1 billion in assets and 15.2 million members as of December 2025.
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
Two of the largest, U.S. Central and WesCorp, with more than $57 billion in combined assets, were taken over by the NCUA in March 2009.
Q 29Roughly how many credit union members were there worldwide in 2018, per the World Council of Credit Unions?
375 million
More than 100 million of them had joined since 2016. WOCCU counted 85,400 credit unions across 118 countries.
Q 30Which country ranked second in the world for credit union membership, behind the United States?
India
India had about 20 million members, ahead of Canada with 10 million and Brazil with 6 million.