Here’s why Philly’s Ukrainian credit union is growing so fast

On Saturday mornings, at the life-skills classes for Ukrainian immigrants and young people at the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown, “they call me Pan Hroshi, the Money Guy,” said Anatoli Murha, smiling.

He’s the new chief executive officer of the 70-year-old Ukrainian Selfreliance Federal Credit Union of Philadelphia, and leader of a national association of Ukrainian American credit unions, whose membership has swelled in the 17 months since Russia sent forces to invade and bomb its neighbor.

Ukrainian Selfreliance in the past year signed up more than 1,600 new members, according to the National Credit Union Administration. That includes sponsored and working refugees admitted under the U.S. United for Ukraine (”U for U”) program, mostly women and children, since fighting-aged men are barred from leaving. This brought the total to 14,000, at a growth rate triple that of the expansive U.S. credit union universe as a whole.

Loans and deposits also rose quickly; assets now stand at half a billion dollars, a one-third jump since 2020.

Murha agreed to answer questions for The Inquirer at his Feasterville headquarters; there are satellite branches in Northeast Philadelphia and nearby suburbs, a center of the Ukrainian diaspora. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

There was a self-reliance movement in Ukraine more than 100 years ago, to start our own community institutions. This included what we called the cooperative credit union movement of the Ukraine. [The Communist Soviet government] shut it down.

After World War II, Ukrainians went to many nations. Everyone needed some kind of access to credit. Ukrainians in New York remembered the old movement, and they started the Selfreliance Association, to help channel financial grants and provide basic necessities, with branches around the U.S.

At that time, American federal credit unions were also still new. The association began forming these credit unions wherever Ukrainians settled.

We now have 11 credit unions with 118,000 members, $4.5 billion in assets, and branches in many cities. I’m the chairman of the national association. We work together and share a lot of information and support for Ukraine.

We grow, and the Ukrainians keep coming, especially since Feb. 24 [when Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and neighboring areas].

The typical Ukrainian is conservative. They want to see the money safe in a savings account. But now instead, a lot of people are sending money back.

A lot of people want to contribute to Ukraine, through the Ukrainian Federation of America, the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee on Cottman Avenue, sometimes directly to the National Bank of Ukraine. So we stopped charging on wire transfers to Ukraine or Poland. We don’t sweat thinking about the costs involved in that.

You think you are becoming numb, and then something else happens, and it is real. You see someone crying, you know it has happened, again.

On [July 7], one of my colleagues found out her uncle was killed in the war. Earlier in the week, Lviv was bombed, a residential complex, near the Ukrainian Catholic University, a well-known institution. It is difficult, it is sad. The Ukrainians here are resilient.

For a long time, people thought of us for savings and small, personal loans. Our customers save money. And some have done well for themselves. They want to do more, but they also want assurances they can afford what they are wanting to do.

Under Mary Kolodij, our previous president, we did a better job letting people in the community know we now have more infrastructure, supporting more products — different types of mortgages, better auto-loan rates, investment-property loans, small-business loans.

People come to us because they know we will talk them through the process. If you are buying a house, for $200,000 or $2 million, it’s a big step that changes your life. Our staff can help, in English and Ukrainian, and in Russian. In Soviet times, a lot of people spoke Russian. If that is their primary language it makes them really comfortable.

And we are becoming multigenerational: we are seeing the grandchildren of people who joined in the 1990s now opening accounts with us. Twenty percent of our customers are under age 18. They start saving early.

There is a network of over 300 credit unions in Ukraine now. In 2020, for example, I went to the area of Cherkasy, to a credit union for small agricultural producers, with the World Council for Credit Unions, a nongovernmental organization. I spent a day and a half presenting on how we use business-development techniques in the U.S. to develop relationships with members. I grew up in Detroit — my family worked for all of the Big 3 automakers — but I was able to present in Ukrainian, so we were a big hit.

There has been a big shift! In the 1990s, you still had the old attitudes from under [the Soviet Union]. Then a challenging time in the late 2000s, with the shifting governments.

For a few years, I didn’t go there. And then I was back in 2018. Walking in Kyiv, I saw a new country. People laughing in public, and embracing! A hip Ukraine!

The country changed a lot faster than I thought was possible. You have a whole new generation born post-Soviet, they have had a chance to travel and see how the rest of the world operates and how people are living.

At the credit unions, you don’t just see the legacy employees from the time of the state enterprises; you see younger people, having a good camaraderie, and not waiting for the leader to ask all the questions.

They are asking, “What can we do to embrace those ways, and have true freedom?” They are more accepting that they can do this and have a happier life.