Credit union salary report, credit union salary survey and compensation survey prices compared
A credit union salary report costs between $285 and $6,790 a year where the publisher prints a price, and Gallagher does not print one at all. For the CEO and the executive team, that money buys asset-size comparisons nothing public can give you. For tellers, member service and loan staff, the federal wage survey already publishes medians for the banking and credit intermediation sector, and they sit within a percent or two of the cross-industry figures.
Need a defensible range for a branch or back-office role today? Price it on the right. The builder works from the federal wage survey and gives you a band and a posted range you can put in the job ad.
- P25
- $0
- P50 ยท Median
- $0
- P75
- $0
Suggested posted range
Built from public U.S. BLS OES wage data (May 2025 release), adjusted for market, seniority and company stage by the multipliers published in our methodology.
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Get startedWhich credit union salary survey a credit union under 200 staff actually needs
Buy a credit union survey for the leadership team and stop buying it for the frontline. The federal sector medians for tellers, loan interviewers and new accounts clerks are within 0.3 percent of the cross-industry figure, and their percentile ladders already read like pay bands. The picture breaks at the top: financial managers in the sector run from $98,390 to $207,210 at the quartiles, a 111 percent spread, because the same code holds a branch manager at a $60 million credit union and a finance director at a national bank. That is exactly the gap an asset-size cut fixes.
The split matters because credit union headcount is frontline-heavy. A $400 million credit union with 110 staff might have seven people in its executive and senior management team and a hundred in branches, lending, the contact center and operations. A $1,155 CEO report prices one of those seats. The mistake runs the other way too: HR teams price member service roles off a generic salary site, which blends in retail and call center work, and wonder why their best representatives leave for the bank across the street.
Quick guide
- CEO pay by asset size
- Buy a CU executive report
- CFO, COO, chief lending officer
- Buy a CU executive report
- Tellers, MSRs, loan staff
- Sector wage data
- Range for a job ad
- Metro market data
Credit union compensation survey prices and coverage
Every price below is quoted from the publisher's own product page or prospectus. America's Credit Unions charges non-members exactly double on every compensation product, so membership alone decides whether the staff report costs $835 or $1,670. Two publishers sell only to participants, and one prints no price at all.
| Survey | Published price | Covers | Sample | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| America's Credit Unions Staff Salary Report 2026-2027 | $835 member, $1,670 non-member | Over 100 positions including the CEO, plus 10 part-time positions, with a cost-of-labor multiplier for states and over 400 cities | More than 900 credit unions | Credit union job titles in one PDF |
| America's Credit Unions Staff Salary Report, under $50M | $285 member, $570 non-member. Free through several state leagues | Nearly 50 full-time and several part-time positions | Credit unions with $50 million or less in assets | The smallest credit unions |
| America's Credit Unions CEO and Senior Executive reports | $1,155 member, $2,310 non-member, each | CEO, and separately EVP, CFO, COO, CIO, CML, CHRO and CLO, by asset size and region | Credit unions of $100 million or more | Boards setting executive pay |
| America's Credit Unions Compensation Analytics | Basic $955 / $1,910, Silver $1,395 / $2,790, Gold $3,395 / $6,790 | Online custom reports with Excel output. Silver adds the staff PDF, Gold adds all three PDFs | More than 900 credit unions, over 100 job titles | HR teams who want to filter by peer group |
| CUES Compensation Survey | $1,660 member, $1,970 non-member, consultants from $4,995. 20% off for participants | Executives and staff in one portal, filters for asset size, members, field of membership and region, plus board compensation | Hundreds of credit unions, exact count not published | Whole-team access for a calendar year |
| Pearl Meyer Top Credit Unions CEO and Senior Executive | Participants only: $2,195 report, $2,690 with the non-executive survey, $3,750 with special analysis | CEO and 29 senior executive positions, base, incentives, retirement and employment agreements | 88 credit unions, $500 million to $55 billion in assets | Large credit unions |
| Gallagher Executive Compensation and Benefits Survey | Not published. Contact form only | CEO, CFO and the next four highest paid executives, ten asset ranges from under $50 million to over $5 billion | 549 credit unions and more than 2,000 executives in 2026 | Executive pay by asset tier |
| WMG Credit Union Salary Survey | $1,450 participant fee, less $50 to $300 in discounts | 327 benchmark jobs with job descriptions, 21 executive and 306 non-executive | 18 participants in the 2025 edition | Detailed job matching, if the sample fits you |
| BalancedComp Salary and Incentive Survey | $650 | 150 benchmark positions, banks and credit unions separate and blended | 373 financial institutions | A low-cost cross-check |
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics | $0 | Every occupation in the credit intermediation sector nationally, plus every metro across all industries | Full federal establishment survey, May 2025 estimates | Frontline and back-office bands, if you can work the tables |
| WageList | $99 a month, or $948 a year | Staff roles by market, with a band and a postable range | Built on the federal wage survey above | Staff bands and job ad ranges, all year, without a sales call |
Four honest caveats. Our own row does not report CEO pay by asset size, so it is not a substitute for a credit union executive report when the board sets the CEO's package. WMG's sample was 18 participants in 2025, which is thin for anything beyond the advisory credit unions it was built around. Pearl Meyer and WMG publish participant prices only, so the real cost includes the staff hours to submit your data. And BalancedComp blends banks with credit unions unless you use its separate cuts.
The frontline is priced correctly by public data, and the leadership team is not
The federal wage survey does not publish a credit-union-only cell. Ask its data service for industry 522130, credit unions, and it answers that the series does not exist. The closest published industry is 522, credit intermediation, which puts credit unions in with commercial banks, savings institutions and nondepository lenders. For branch roles that is fine, because a teller is a teller. For leadership it is not, because the sector's executives are dominated by institutions a hundred times your size.
Put the sector median next to the cross-industry median and the pattern is plain. Tellers, loan interviewers and new accounts clerks sit within 0.3 percent. Loan officers are 0.8 percent lower. Member service is the one frontline role that runs higher, by 7.8 percent. Then the gaps open up: human resources specialists are 18.3 percent above the cross-industry median and chief executives 21.9 percent above, while financial managers are 18.5 percent below.
That last one surprises people until they read the code's own definition, which covers the financial activities "of a branch, office, or department of an establishment". In banking that is the branch manager, and there are a lot of them. Benchmark your CFO against that median and you will underpay by a wide margin.
The three numbers that matter most
- Teller
- $43,030 across all industries, $42,920 in the sector. A 0.3 percent difference, on the role that is usually a third of your headcount.
- Member service representative
- $44,770 across all industries, $48,270 in the sector. Price off a generic site and you are 7.8 percent low.
- Financial manager
- $166,570 across all industries, $135,760 in the sector, with the branch manager inside the code. Neither number is your CFO.
| Occupation | Employed in the sector | All industries | Credit intermediation | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tellers | 317,340 | $43,030 | $42,920 | 0.3% lower |
| Loan officers | 222,090 | $76,690 | $76,070 | 0.8% lower |
| Customer service representatives | 153,400 | $44,770 | $48,270 | 7.8% higher |
| Loan interviewers and clerks | 132,850 | $50,020 | $49,860 | 0.3% lower |
| First-line supervisors of office workers | 102,990 | $69,500 | $66,060 | 4.9% lower |
| New accounts clerks | 34,800 | $47,670 | $47,540 | 0.3% lower |
| Bill and account collectors | 33,200 | $47,030 | $48,730 | 3.6% higher |
| Accountants and auditors | 41,120 | $83,680 | $85,200 | 1.8% higher |
| Credit analysts | 40,370 | $83,510 | $82,240 | 1.5% lower |
| Compliance officers | 19,850 | $80,730 | $83,650 | 3.6% higher |
| Human resources specialists | 19,500 | $75,940 | $89,810 | 18.3% higher |
| Computer user support specialists | 17,270 | $61,860 | $60,870 | 1.6% lower |
| Network and computer systems administrators | 10,140 | $99,130 | $96,350 | 2.8% lower |
| Financial managers | 136,850 | $166,570 | $135,760 | 18.5% lower |
| General and operations managers | 75,300 | $105,770 | $119,980 | 13.4% higher |
| Marketing managers | 14,920 | $166,790 | $170,600 | 2.3% higher |
| Human resources managers | 6,960 | $149,280 | $156,040 | 4.5% higher |
| Chief executives | 6,090 | $213,990 | $260,760 | 21.9% higher |
Annual median wage, May 2025 estimates from the federal Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, industry 522 (credit intermediation and related activities) against all industries. Customer service representatives is the federal code that holds most member service representative jobs. How the survey is built, and where it falls short, is on our BLS salary data page.
Percentile ladders that already look like a salary band, and the ones that do not
A survey report only becomes useful once it is a band with a floor, a midpoint and a ceiling. Take the 25th percentile as the floor, the median as the midpoint and the 75th as the ceiling. Frontline credit union roles land at a spread of 24 to 34 percent, which is where comp practice puts support grades anyway. Leadership roles land at 70 to 167 percent, which is not a band at all.
| Role | Floor (25th) | Midpoint (median) | Ceiling (75th) | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teller | $37,010 | $42,920 | $46,520 | 26% |
| New accounts clerk | $43,810 | $47,540 | $54,460 | 24% |
| Bill and account collector | $45,020 | $48,730 | $56,880 | 26% |
| Member service representative | $42,590 | $48,270 | $55,880 | 31% |
| Loan interviewer and processor | $45,010 | $49,860 | $60,400 | 34% |
| Office and operations supervisor | $56,000 | $66,060 | $80,830 | 44% |
| Human resources specialist | $68,100 | $89,810 | $116,000 | 70% |
| Loan officer | $51,070 | $76,070 | $103,010 | 102% |
| Financial manager | $98,390 | $135,760 | $207,210 | 111% |
| Chief executive | $172,200 | $260,760 | $393,730 | 129% |
| General and operations manager | $73,690 | $119,980 | $197,010 | 167% |
Read the bottom five rows as a warning rather than a band. The loan officer spread is partly commission, since mortgage originators on production pay sit in the same code as a consumer lender on salary. The three management spreads mean the occupation code is too broad for the job: the federal survey cannot separate the operations lead of a four-branch credit union from the operations head of a regional bank. That is where a credit union survey with asset-size cuts earns its price. For the rest, the mechanics of turning percentiles into grades are on how to create salary bands, and the arithmetic of spread and midpoint is on the salary midpoint calculator.
Getting sector and geography at the same time, which no single table gives you
The federal survey publishes occupation by industry at the national level, and occupation by metro area across all industries. It does not publish occupation by industry by metro. So you can learn what a member service representative earns in banking nationally, or what one earns in Denver across every employer, but not what one earns at a Denver credit union.
The usable fix is a two-step ratio. Divide the sector median by the national all-industry median to get the sector factor, then apply it to your metro median. For customer service representatives the factor is $48,270 divided by $44,770, which is 1.078. Denver publishes a median of $48,590 across all industries, so the estimate for a Denver credit union is about $52,400. Minneapolis-St. Paul publishes $49,480, which gives about $53,300.
It is an estimate, and it assumes the sector factor holds locally, which it broadly does for branch roles because the same local labor market sets both. It is also reproducible, which matters when your supervisory committee or an examiner asks how a number was built. Doing it by hand for forty job titles is the part nobody has time for, and it is what the builder at the top of this page does.
Worked example
- MSR, all industries, national
- $44,770
- MSR, credit intermediation, national
- $48,270
- Sector factor
- 1.078
- MSR, Denver, all industries
- $48,590
- Estimate, Denver credit union
- about $52,400
Apply the same factor to your own metro. How far to move a band for location is covered in geographic pay differentials.
Four things a credit union survey gives you that public data does not
Asset-size peers
CEO and executive pay tracks assets far more than it tracks job title. Gallagher reports ten asset ranges from under $50 million to over $5 billion, which is the comparison a board actually needs.
Credit union titles
Chief lending officer, BSA officer, member service representative, collections manager. Federal codes fold these into broader occupations, and a credit union survey matches them one to one.
Executive benefits
Bonus targets, executive retirement plans, perquisites and employment agreements. The federal survey records wages only, so any executive package review needs a survey.
Board compensation
CUES reports board compensation alongside executive and staff pay, and Gallagher covers board expenses. Nothing public touches either.
There is a fifth thing most credit unions underrate: participating. Submitting your data takes 20 percent off CUES, is the only way to buy Pearl Meyer at all, and earns WMG discounts of $50 to $300. Before you buy, also call your league. The West Virginia and Ohio leagues both hand members the America's Credit Unions salary report free under a group license, which is a four-figure line you may not need to spend.
Who buys credit union salary data, and what they need from it
The HR director
At a $150 million to $1 billion credit union with 40 to 200 staff, hiring tellers and member service reps every month and needing ranges that hold up when two employees compare notes.
The CEO of a small credit union
Running HR on top of everything else, with a handful of staff, and wanting each offer documented before the board sees the budget. See WageList for small teams.
The board compensation committee
Setting the CEO's package once a year. They need an asset-size executive report, and a documented staff structure beneath it so the pay ladder makes sense end to end.
The HR lead in a posting state
Hiring in states that require a good faith range in the ad, and needing a current band per role rather than one report every two years. See job posting salary ranges.
Posting laws apply to credit unions, and some CEO pay is already public
State salary range laws count employees and look at where the work happens. They do not ask about charter type or tax status, and they do not exempt branch roles. A credit union hiring in Colorado posts a range from its first employee, and in California the duty starts at 15 employees. That turns pay data from a budgeting exercise into a requirement attached to every job ad. Our pay transparency law guide covers each state, and the state by state table puts them side by side.
Executive pay has its own disclosure rule, and it depends on your charter. A state-chartered credit union is exempt under section 501(c)(14) and files Form 990, whose Part VII lists current officers with no minimum compensation threshold. A federal credit union is exempt under section 501(c)(1) and files no Form 990. So at a state charter the CEO's pay is a public document, and a board that cannot explain it with peer data is exposed in a way a federal charter is not. The general-market survey publishers are compared on salary survey providers.
Price every branch and back-office role, not just the executive team
Sector and metro data, a band per role, and a range you can paste into the job ad. No sales call to find out what it costs.
Credit union salary survey questions buyers ask
How much does the CUNA staff salary report cost?
The 2026-2027 Staff Salary Report from America's Credit Unions, the former CUNA, costs $835 for members and $1,670 for non-members. The edition for credit unions under $50 million in assets costs $285 for members and $570 for non-members. Many state leagues give the small edition to their members free under a group license.
How much does the CUES compensation survey cost?
The CUES Compensation Survey costs $1,660 for members and $1,970 for non-members, with consultant pricing from $4,995. Participants get 20 percent off, and U.S. credit unions on a CUES Unlimited+ membership get it at no extra cost. Unlimited+ itself runs from $3,625 for credit unions under $149 million in assets.
How much do credit union employees make?
In the banking and credit intermediation sector the federal wage survey puts the median teller at $42,920 a year, member service and customer service representatives at $48,270, loan interviewers at $49,860 and loan officers at $76,070, all May 2025. Those frontline figures sit within 1 percent of the cross-industry median, except member service, which is 7.8 percent higher.
What is the best credit union compensation survey?
For staff roles, the America's Credit Unions Staff Salary Report or Compensation Analytics has the widest credit union sample, more than 900 credit unions and over 100 job titles. For the executive team, Gallagher reports ten asset ranges from 549 credit unions, and Pearl Meyer covers 88 large credit unions from $500 million to $55 billion in assets.
Is credit union CEO salary public?
Only at state-chartered credit unions. They are exempt under section 501(c)(14) and file Form 990, which lists current officers with no minimum compensation threshold. Federal credit unions are exempt under section 501(c)(1) and file no Form 990, so their CEO pay is not publicly disclosed that way.
What salary survey should a small credit union use?
Under $50 million in assets, the purpose-built choice is the America's Credit Unions small credit union edition at $285 for members, which covers nearly 50 full-time positions. Check with your league first, because several give it to members free. For tellers and member service roles, public wage data is already a close match.
Do credit unions have to post salary ranges in job ads?
Yes, wherever a state pay transparency law reaches the job. These laws count employees and look at where the work is performed, not at charter type or tax status. A credit union hiring a teller in Colorado, California, Washington, New York or Illinois posts a good faith range like any other employer.
Does the CUES survey include staff positions or only executives?
Both. CUES merged its Executive Compensation Survey and its Employee Salary Survey into one CUES Compensation Survey, delivered through an online portal with access for the whole team for a calendar year. Reports show percentiles for each position and can be filtered by asset size, member count, field of membership and region.
Start with the role you are hiring this month
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Keep going
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Credit union CEO salary by asset size
Which executive report a board should buy, and what each costs.
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Salary survey providers
The general-market publishers and what each one charges.
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Healthcare compensation surveys
The same comparison for medical and dental practices.
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Salary bands
Turning percentiles into grades the whole credit union shares.