Credit union strikes deal to acquire suburban Chicago bank

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NuMark Credit Union in Joliet, Illinois, said Wednesday it would acquire a neighboring Chicago-area bank. The deal picks up on a well-established trend of credit unions buying banks, which has fallen off early this year after a torrid 2024.

The $850 million-asset NuMark said in a press release that it plans to purchase Lemont National Bank in Lemont, Illinois. The all-cash deal is expected to close in the second half of this year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

If the transaction closes, it will be NuMark’s second acquisition of a bank. In 2023, the credit union acquired Pioneer State Bank in Illinois.

NuMark, which operates in northeastern Illinois and Greater Chicago, has 13 branches. Should the Lemont deal close as planned, it will have $910 million of assets and 15 branches.

The two organizations “share a common vision in that we are both invested in the importance of putting people and community first in all that we do,” Lloyd Fredendall, president and CEO of NuMark, said in the release. “As we welcome Lemont customers into the NuMark Credit Union family, we look forward to providing a top-notch experience by focusing on our member-owners’ needs.”

After last year’s flurry of credit-union bank mergers, when a record 22 such deals were announced, activity has slowed to a trickle. The only other deal this year, announced in January, was the $1.4 billion-asset Frontwave Credit Union’s plan to buy neighboring Community Valley Bank. Both companies are in Southern California.

The previous all-time high for credit-union bank tie-ups was 16 in 2022, according to American Banker’s tallies.

Credit unions in recent years have pursued bank acquisitions to expand their business lines and geographies in bids for scale. Small banks, struggling to keep pace with larger competitors’ expensive technology offerings, have sold to credit unions because the deals provide relatively simple, all-cash exits.

However, banking industry advocates have increasingly pushed back against these deals, arguing that credit unions stray from their mission of serving people of modest means in limited geographic areas when they effectively operate as banks. Credit unions get federal tax exemptions because of their mission.

Bankers and deal advisers said the opposition has created concern about regulatory approvals and contributed to the slowdown this year.

Bank of Idaho Holding, for one, said in a regulatory filing that it considered selling to a credit union. But the Idaho Falls-based bank ultimately passed on the offer in part because of “questions as to whether a transaction with the credit union would receive required regulatory approvals in a timely manner, or at all.”

Instead, the $1.3 billion-asset Bank of Idaho agreed in January to sell to Kalispell, Montana-based Glacier Bancorp for $245.4 million.

Credit unions argue that when they acquire banks, they help communities retain local financial services, as opposed to selling to larger companies based elsewhere.

Mike Bell, an attorney with the law firm Honigman in Michigan who advises on credit-union bank deals, said in an email that such deals have only temporarily slowed. He said multiple credit unions are in talks to buy banks this year. “I’ve never been busier,” he told American Banker.

Overall, 21 bank sales have been announced to date this year, according to S&P Global data. In 2024, 126 banks announced plans to sell, and those deals had an aggregate value of $16.3 billion. Those numbers exceeded the 98 announcements valued at $4.2 billion in 2023.