Berks Community Federal Credit Union
By Joyce Moed, Reporter

READING, Pa. – Like other smaller financial institutions, Berks Community Federal Credit Union here is facing special challenge in today's economic environment, due to its size.

The main challenge for the $46-million CU is facing all the compliance, regulatory and reporting obligations it has to do, said CEO Terry Shoemaker.

"That puts a burden on an institution our size," he said.

Another issue for the 7,000-member credit union is facing is the decrease in lending.

"We're not doing the amount of lending we would like to do, or even the amount of lending we did a year ago," Shoemaker said.

Investments are also not doing well during this time, he noted, making things even more difficult "unless we decide to become all fee-driven," he said, stressing that is not in the CU's plans.
"We're just trying to manage our expenses, and just trying to weather the storm," Shoemaker said.

Something else the Berks Community FCU is trying to do is retrain its staff.

"We're trying to convert them to a more selling culture," Shoemaker said.

Fortunately for Berks Community FCU, its area is not seeing some of the real estate issues seen in other U.S. cities.

"We've been lucky," Shoemaker said. "We're in a market where we didn't experience the high-high, so we're not experiencing the low-low."

The only products the credit union did feel the burn was in credit card debt and signature loans.
The CU is also experiencing an increase in counseling members about financial issues they are facing.

"There's definitely been an increase in that," Shoemaker said.

As for the future, Shoemaker said he isn't expecting things to get significantly better anytime soon.

"We're looking at 2009 as being at best a so-so year," he said. "We're already looking at budgeting a loss for next year."