Ultimate Guide to Westside Federal Credit Union: Is It Worth Banking There?

Westside Federal Credit Union Executive Summary

• We won’t be signing up for this tiny institution of just 2,000 members 
• While their loan rates are roughly in line with the market, their deposit products are quite bad, their technology stack is woefully behind the times, and we could not find publicly available annual or audit reports to asses the stability of the institution. These are all massive red flags for us, so we’ll be looking for basic banking services elsewhere 

Westside Federal Credit Union is a micro-institution, serving a small semi-rural upstate NY locality near Rochester

This tiny credit union serves the communities of Chili, Churchville, Ogden, Riga, and Sweden. Notably, this includes Spencerport and Brockport. For those not familiar with the area these are all very small towns just outside of Rochester, NY. It’s not completely clear, but the name “Westside” seems to allude to the fact that these are the main outlying towns on the west side of Rochester.

WFCU only offers the most basic banking services. Namely a savings and checking account and auto, personal, home equity, and boat/RV loans. Notably missing is a credit card product, which we still tend to see even in small banks/credit unions – often with a low APR.

While their website lists a mortgage as another product, it’s really just a link to a partner who offers mortgages, we assume they likely just have a deal with that partner and get a referral fee.

Membership requirements are strict and total membership has been falling slightly in recent years

Unlike many other credit unions which have been loosening their membership requirements to increase their number of members, WFCU has retained a strict membership policy. Only residents of the small collection of communities they serve are eligible. Again those communities are:

• Chili, NY
• Churchville, NY
• Ogden, NY
• Riga, NY
• Sweden, NY

There are a couple of strange exceptions to the above requirement, that likely doesn’t apply to very many people at all. For example, if your spouse died within the boundaries of the above communities, but you no longer live there, you are still eligible. Another notable exception is if you are an immediate family member of someone who is eligible.

These strict requirements seem to be resulting in falling membership, over the last 3 years membership has declined from 1,919 to 1,876, according to reporting filed with the National Credit Union Association.

While WFCU’s website claims signing up is as easy as filling out an application form and submitting a $5 deposit, it wasn’t obvious to us where that application form is located, what information is required, or where and how to submit it.

They offer a very limited set of financial products, even for a small credit union

Note that the below only describes personal accounts, there are no business services/products offered 

On the deposits side

We only see one type of savings account and one type of checking account offered. The savings account rate is dismal, approximately 8x lower than what you can easily get in the market at the time we checked. 

While the checking account looked to have normal functions, we were disappointed at the fee schedule, which seemed to charge for things that are usually free, like you’re first set of physical checks. Fortunately, they do not have an account minimum or charge monthly maintenance fees. 

On the lending side 

Westside Federal Credit Union only offers very basic loan types, they don’t even offer a mortgage (although their website links to a company that does). They do offer personal loans, HELOC, vehicle loans (auto, RV, boat), and debt consolidation loans. When we checked, their rates looked roughly in line with what other credit unions are offering at this time. It was hard to tell because WFCU only listed the “as low as” rate for each loan type, with no additional information about the range of how much higher they might charge depending on their assessment of the loan and your creditworthiness. But, from a quick analysis, we didn’t see a major opportunity here to get a great rate better than what you might find at most other credit unions and banks at this time. 

Customer reviews are very strong, but that is based on extremely limited data

When we were able to find customer reviews, they were very strong. However, we were able to find fewer than 10 reviews to base this assessment on.

It does not appear that Westside Community Credit Union is registered with the Better Business Bureau. 

While they offer online banking, it only has very basic functionality 

West Federal’s online banking platform looks quite dated. While you can accomplish basic tasks like checking an account balance or paying a bill, you can’t do much more than that. 

In fact, it doesn’t even look like you can start a new loan application or send a wire online! Yikes! 

This outdated technology stack does not give us confidence that our money would be safe and secure and that they are up to date on all the latest technology security standards. 

They do not offer a mobile app

This makes them extremely far behind the times, technology-wise. 

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