LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I wanted to compliment Mike Welch on his April 20 column, "Credit Unions Do a Lot Right But Not Everything." I particularly agreed with his point about credit unions' very low delinquency rates, yet with loan denials as high as 46%.

A major contributing factor to the lowest delinquency rates and high loan denials are credit unions' inability to differentiate between ‘no credit' and ‘bad credit'. Case in point—my friend has a 3.96 GPA in college and has so many scholarships he makes money going to school. On top of that he is working at an engineering internship making $15-20 an hour. Upon completion of his undergrad, he is going to Duke to get a masters in law. He will be among the top 1% of earners within 10 years. He is 20, and when recently applying for a credit union's credit card, was turned down due to no credit.

Congratulations on a new year of low delinquency rates. Guess where he won't be going for future financial products. Oh yeah, he just got a credit card with Capital One.

Bryan Sims
CEO
brass|Media Inc.
Corvallis, Ore.