Credit unions grow as bank fees rise

Occupy Wall Street is moving mounds of money to Main Street.

More than 1 million Americans fled from big banks and opened accounts with credit unions last year, pushing membership in the financial cooperatives to a record 91.8 million.

The exodus shows no signs of letting up this year, as tone-deaf financial behemoths continue to put the squeeze on their customers by jacking up fees.

“There is a real pent-up frustration with some of the larger financial institutions,” says Kirk Kordeleski, CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union.

Kordeleski says his Long Islandbased credit union grew its coffers by $80 million last month — double what it had expected — by wooing away customers from Bank of America and other big banks with its low-to-no fees.

Credit unions started seeing a surge in new accounts last October, after Bofa warned customers they’d soon be charged a $5 monthly fee for debit-card use.

The customer backlash spawned Bank Transfer Day, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement that urged Americans to take their money out of big for-profit banks and put it into smaller community banks and not-for-profit credit unions.

Bofa quickly backed down from the debit-card surcharge. But the bank and its rivals have been coming up with other fees to make up for the money they’re losing amid tougher rules since 2008’s near financial collapse.

Wells Fargo was the latest to unveil a new levy, this week warning its customers in New York, New Jersey and a handful of other states that they’d soon be slapped with a $7-a-month charge for previously free checking accounts.

Jpmorgan Chase griped recently that it loses money on most of its customers who have less than $100,000 with the bank.

Kordeleski says he’s happy to take the new business. “A lot of talk by people in the financial services industry has suggested these customers who are leaving would be the least profitable, but that’s not what we’ve found.”

Credit union profit jumped 41 percent to $6.4 billion last year, according to the National Credit Union Administration. More than 1.3 million Americans opened new accounts, a jump from less than 600,000 in 2010.