Credit Unions Are Guessing About Gen Z. The Data Shows It.

Ask almost any credit union CEO about their biggest long-term risk and you’ll hear some version of the same answer: our members are getting older, and we need younger ones.

Then look at what those same credit unions are actually doing. A TikTok account. A “Gen Z” landing page with brighter colors. A sweepstakes. A financial literacy night at the local high school. A new logo. Each one is a reasonable idea on its own. Together they look less like a strategy and more like an institution trying things to see what sticks.

The research backs up that suspicion. Credit unions don’t have a Gen Z awareness problem or a creative problem. They have a product and priorities problem, and most of the marketing is being asked to cover for it.

The Scoreboard Isn’t Close

To win millennials and Gen Z, you have to win their primary checking account. That’s the anchor relationship everything else hangs off: direct deposit, cards, auto loans, eventually a mortgage.

J.D. Power’s inaugural 2026 U.S. Millennial & Gen Z Checking Satisfaction Study found these two generations now open 67% of all new primary checking accounts in the U.S. As The Financial Brand reported, midsize banks, community banks and credit unions hold 26% of these younger relationships but are winning only 21% of new ones.

Online banks and fintechs are moving the other way. They hold 20% of existing primary relationships with these generations and are capturing 28% of new ones. Chime alone accounted for 13% of all new checking account openings in J.D. Power’s late-2025 data, well ahead of Chase in second place.

As we covered in The Fastest Way to Win Gen Z? Market to the Parents Already Banking With You, ProSight’s research shows community institutions’ share of Gen Z primary relationships fell from 19% in 2023 to 9% in 2025. That isn’t a slow drift. It’s a collapse.

The Membership Is Aging, Not Renewing

The demographic math has been visible for years:

• The average credit union member is about 53, versus a national average age near 38.5, according to Filene data cited by PYMNTS.
• Over the past two decades the median member age rose from 42 to 52, and baby boomers grew from 28% of membership in 2015 to 39%, per Tyfone.
• Only 11% of Gen Z and 15% of millennials are credit union members, while 79% and 69% respectively use larger banks, according to PYMNTS.

One credit union fintech founder put a sharper point on it: the average member is around 55, and closer to 60 if you strip out indirect auto lending. That detail matters. Plenty of the “young members” on a credit union’s books arrived through a car dealer’s F&I office. They never chose the credit union, and many never come back after the loan pays off.

Exhibit A: Credit Unions Know What Gen Z Wants and Aren’t Planning to Build It

This is the clearest evidence that the industry is guessing rather than listening.

PYMNTS research summarized by eMarketer compared what Gen Z says it wants from a financial institution against what credit unions plan to offer by 2030:

Read that last row again. The single product that most directly serves the family pipeline, a debit card designed for a teenager or young adult, is something 85% of credit unions don’t intend to offer before the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, those same institutions are funding social campaigns aimed at the exact consumers they’ve decided not to build for.

Exhibit B: Gen Z Wants Instant Payments. Most Credit Unions Can Only Receive Them.

As we detailed in Gen Z Wants Instant Payments. Most Credit Unions Can’t Send Them Yet, 78% of Gen Z in the Federal Reserve’s consumer payments study said instant payments are important. Their top use case is paying friends and family.

On the supply side, only 13.6% of small credit unions are on FedNow, about half the rate of small commercial banks. And across the industry, only about 4% of institutions had both send and receive turned on.

So the most-requested capability, sending money instantly to a friend from your own account, is the one almost no credit union can deliver. Gen Z isn’t waiting. That activity is happening in Venmo, Cash App and PayPal, with balances that sit outside your share drafts. A youth campaign built on “fast, modern banking” can’t fix that, and running one before the product exists is how you burn trust with the most skeptical audience you have.

Exhibit C: The Ones Who Do Join Aren’t Impressed

The usual explanation is awareness. And there is a real awareness gap: Apiture’s research found 30% of Gen Z and 21% of millennials don’t know credit unions are an option for their banking.

But awareness doesn’t explain everything. Among Gen Z consumers who are credit union members, only 49% say their credit union offers strong value, compared with 60% of Gen Z customers at big banks, per PYMNTS. The “if they only knew our story” theory runs into a wall here. Many of them know it. They’ve tried the product. They’re comparing it to the app on their phone, not the bank down the street.

Why This Looks Like Throwing Things at the Wall

Put the pieces together and the pattern is easy to spot:

1. Tactics are chosen before the problem is defined. A TikTok channel answers “how do we reach Gen Z?” before anyone has answered “what would make Gen Z choose us as their primary account?”
2. Marketing is asked to sell capabilities that don’t exist. “Modern,” “digital-first,” and “instant” show up in copy while the roadmap says the features are years away, or never.
3. The wrong competitor is in the deck. Most credit union positioning still benchmarks against the big bank on the corner. Gen Z is benchmarking against Chime, Cash App and the fintech with the cleanest budgeting tool. J.D. Power describes what younger customers want in one word: control. Automated savings, credit score monitoring and budgeting tools are what they use. Member ownership is a nice story, but it doesn’t answer the question they’re asking.
4. Gen Z is treated as one audience. A 16-year-old with a parent co-signer and a 28-year-old freelancer with three income streams have almost nothing in common financially.
5. Success isn’t measured. Few credit unions track primary-account rate for members under 28, or how much of their young members’ money leaves every month through P2P apps. Without those numbers, every campaign “worked.”

None of this means credit unions can’t win. About half of Gen Z and millennials say they’d consider moving to a community bank, online institution or credit union. Some credit unions with a natural pipeline do well; MSU Federal Credit Union reported that Gen Z and millennials made up over half its membership. The opportunity is real. It just isn’t going to be won with a campaign.

When Chasing Young Customers Goes Wrong

Credit unions aren’t the first to fumble this. Big brands with big budgets have done it in public, and the mistakes follow the same pattern: decide to “connect with young people,” pick a tone or a tactic, and skip the step where you check whether it matches how that audience actually lives.

Chase lectured young customers about coffee. In 2019, Chase posted a #MondayMotivation tweet framed as a conversation between a customer and their bank account. The customer asks why the balance is low, and the account tells them to make coffee at home, eat what’s in the fridge and walk instead of taking a cab. It was widely criticized as “poor shaming”, drew responses from members of Congress, and was deleted within about three hours. Chase’s follow-up promised to get better at #MondayMotivation tweets. One marketer quoted by The Financial Brand summed it up: it was meant to sound like the bank was laughing with customers and came across as laughing at them. The lesson for credit unions is direct. Younger consumers are already anxious about money. A financial institution borrowing a meme format to tell them their problem is lattes isn’t relatable. It’s condescending.

Wells Fargo told teens to give up the arts. To promote its 2016 Teen Financial Education Day, Wells Fargo ran ads reading “A ballerina yesterday. An engineer today” and “An actor yesterday. A botanist today.” Broadway performers and arts advocates piled on, and the bank apologized publicly and changed the creative. The intent, encouraging kids to think about the future, was fine. The execution told young people which dreams were worth having, which is the opposite of what a financial education campaign should do.

Pepsi tried to borrow a movement. Pepsi’s 2017 ad with Kendall Jenner ended with her defusing a protest by handing a police officer a soda. It was built to court millennials’ interest in activism and was pulled within about a day after a wave of criticism that it trivialized social justice protests. A CBC analysis pointed to the ad being made in-house without outside perspective, and one brand agency head described the delivery as having a certain desperation. For financial institutions, the takeaway is that “authenticity” can’t be bolted on. If the brand hasn’t earned a place in a conversation, joining it in an ad reads as opportunism.

Halifax picked a social media fight with its own customers. We’ve covered this one before: a social team response that invited unhappy customers to close their accounts turned a branding decision into a customer-loss story. Tone on social is a policy decision, not just a copywriting one.

The credit union versions tend to be quieter, but the pattern shows up:

• Edgy for edgy’s sake. SF Fire Credit Union’s “Side Bank Curious” campaign used innuendo to get younger consumers’ attention. The Financial Brand’s coverage included an agency head who found it too specific and disorienting, and noted that community-focused institutions risk alienating existing members with this kind of joke. U.S. Eagle FCU’s ad in which a sweet elderly woman drops an F-bomb about overdraft fees got laughs from marketers, but even a sympathetic roundup acknowledged not everyone would appreciate it. Neither is a documented failure. Both show how quickly “get Gen Z’s attention” turns into a gamble with the members you already have, without evidence it moves the primary account.
• Upgrading the app and making it worse. J.D. Power’s Paul Allen told The Financial Brand that credit union members under 40 reported understanding their mobile app better, yet liking it less. He called it “app regression.” Credit unions spent real money on technology upgrades, then didn’t communicate well enough to make members happier with them. Allen also flagged surprise overdraft and minimum balance fees as a key driver of dissatisfaction among younger members.
• Celebrating vanity metrics. Industry roundups of credit union TikTok efforts tend to highlight costume mascots, dance trends and Minions tie-ins, and report success in views, reach and a few hundred new followers. One featured campaign cited 32,000+ views and 200+ new followers. That may be fine for awareness, but it’s rarely tied to accounts opened, direct deposits moved or primary relationships won.

It’s worth noting what the better efforts have in common. The Michigan Credit Union League’s “Try a Credit Union” campaign started with research into how Gen Z actually chooses financial products, found they test products before committing and still believe credit unions lack digital capabilities, and built the message around those findings. Royal Credit Union’s School $ense TikTok series answers practical questions like how much to save. Research first, usefulness over spectacle.

What to Do Instead

Start with the product audit, not the creative brief. Before another youth campaign gets approved, answer these in writing: Can a member send money instantly to a friend? Is there a teen or young adult card? Does the app have budgeting, savings automation and credit monitoring? How long does mobile account opening take, start to finish? If the answers are no, that’s where the budget conversation belongs.

Use the pipeline you already own. Your Gen X members are funding a lot of their kids’ financial lives. Find the households with recurring transfers to young adults and give them a better way to do it inside your credit union. We laid out a seven-step plan in The Fastest Way to Win Gen Z? Market to the Parents Already Banking With You.

Market what’s real, now. If you can only receive instant payments, say exactly what members can receive instantly: paychecks, side-gig payouts, tax refunds, money from family. Hold the “instant” youth message until send goes live. The instant payments article walks through how.

Fix the indirect leak. If a meaningful share of your under-30 members came in through auto dealers, they’re the cheapest young members you’ll ever acquire. Build an onboarding sequence that tries to turn that loan into a checking relationship in the first 90 days.

Measure primacy, not reach. Track a short list monthly:

• Share of new members under 28
• Primary-account rate for members under 28 (direct deposit plus regular transaction activity)
• Outbound P2P app volume from members under 28
• Account graduation rate for youth accounts 12 months after conversion

If engagement metrics rise and those four don’t move, the campaign didn’t work, no matter how many views it got.

The Bottom Line

Credit unions aren’t losing Gen Z because younger consumers dislike cooperatives. They’re losing because the account a 23-year-old opens at a credit union often does less than the free app on their phone, and marketing has been asked to paper over the difference.

The institutions that win the next generation will be the ones that stop experimenting with channels and start fixing the product, then market it honestly to the families already sitting in their membership.

Related MarketingBanks Coverage

• The Fastest Way to Win Gen Z? Market to the Parents Already Banking With You
• Gen Z Wants Instant Payments. Most Credit Unions Can’t Send Them Yet.

- Advertisement -