Kimberly Clark Credit Union: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Kimberly Clark Credit Union executive summary

• While we’re not eligible to sign up anyway, KCCU’s tiny size, bad technology stack, lack of clear auditor, and more are huge red flags and we would not do business here even if we were eligible 
• If you do want to use their products/services it looks like your best bet is their credit card, their mobile app, and their loan rates looks reasonable as well

Kimberly Clark Credit Union (KCCU) is the smallest financial institution we’ve ever analyzed

We generally like to keep our money at larger financial institutions. Why? While being a larger financial institution is not a guarantee of safety we do think it is generally safer than smaller institutions. Bigger banks and credit unions tend to have more sophisticated management and risk controls, better technology stacks, and are more likely to be rescued by the government if they get into trouble. 

So, we tend to stay away from credit unions like this one, which is quite small by all the measures we looked at: 

• 10K members
• $130M in assets
• Only 1 physical, in-person branch location, in  Memphis, TN

KCCU offers only the most basic financial products, namely a savings account, a checking account, one type of credit card, and a mortgage. 

Their 2-page annual report does not list their auditor. Instead, they list a star rating given by an independent bank rating firm (which we had never heard of), which to us, unfortunately, carries essentially no weight whatsoever. 

Membership is limited to employees and their extended family members

There has recently been a trend of credit unions increasingly opening up their membership and loosening their membership requirements. KCCU does not seem to have followed this trend, however.

Membership is still restricted to employees of the Kimberly Clark Corporation and their family members.

There is some slack in the requirement in that the interpretation of who is a family member is fairly loose. All of the following relatives an employee count and are eligible for membership:

• Spouses
• Children
• Parents and Grandparents,
• Grandchildren
• Siblings
• In-laws (including mother, father, son, daughter, brother, and sister)
• Aunts and Uncles
• Nieces and Nephews

Note that KCCU has a policy of “once a member, always a member.” So once you gain membership you retain it as long as you like, even if you switch companies or the familial status of the employee-member that originally allowed you to sign up.

Signing up is straightforward and easy, if you so choose, its a mere $1 fee and $6 minimum deposit. 

Their savings accounts rates are not competitive, but their loan rates are roughly in line with market rates

Their savings account and CD rates were roughly four to eight times below the best in the market when we checked. Note that instead of most institutions that use language like a “savings account interest rate,” KCCU alludes to their member ownership and refers to the interest you receive in a savings account as “dividends.”

We advocate against savings accounts generally here at Personal Finance Guru, we think they’re terrible products. But this was still extremely disappointing to see. 

On the lending side, their auto, mortgage, and other loan rates looked roughly on par with other 

An interesting exception: their credit card APR is substantially below the market average

Generally, we advocate paying off your credit card in full every month and trying hard to never end up paying credit card interest. But if you make a mistake or are in a jam, it is nice to have as low of a credit APR as possible. That’s why we noticed KCCU’s MasterCard is offering a super low APR range of ~9-16%. This is just about the lowest credit card rate range we’ve seen and if you’re eligible, could be worth considering. 

Generally, customers seem happy 

While there was not very much data to go off of, a survey of customer feedback across platforms was generally positive. 

We were happy to see that Kimberly Clark Credit Union does have an A+ accreditation from the Better Business Bureau. 

Their technology and website might be the worst we’ve seen

KCCU’s website might be the least sophisticated of any financial institution we’ve analyzed (feel free to take a look for yourself!).

While some businesses can get away with poor websites, with financial services it gives us concern that if they can’t even get that right, how can we have confidence that their technology stack is safe, secure, modern, and keeping our money, data, and transactions safe?

To give you a sense of how far behind the times they are, we note that their process for sending wires is currently to ask customers to hand fill out a form and fax it to them. Yikes!

Their app might be a bit of an exception here

While we can’t speak to the safety and security of their app, the user experience appears to be fairly positive as they’ve achieved a 4.9 out of 5 rating in the Apple app store with over 500 reviews. Not bad.

 Frequently Asked Questions

Meet the author: