Mary Cunningham is CEO of USA Federal Credit Union, which uses Internet banking and ATMs to give its 10,000 active-duty members fast account access. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

They call them “our young Marines” at Camp Pendleton’s Pacific Marine Credit Union, and when they are deployed to Iraq they may be dodging more than bullets and mortars. An unlucky (or unwise) few must also avoid the financial treachery of folks back home they thought they could trust. “It’s more prevalent than anyone would like to admit,” says Brad Smith, PMCU’s vice president for strategic development. “A young Marine comes home from deployment and finds his accounts have been cleaned out by the wife or another family member.”

Keeping these brave but financially naïve young men and women from signing away too much control over their money to a loved one is one of the unusual duties PMCU takes on when its core membership — the 1st Marine Division headquartered at Camp Pendleton — is deployed. Nearly three-quarters of the credit union’s membership is E-5 (sergeant) or below, Smith says. And they are very, very young.

Servicewomen and men facing overseas duty receive pre-deployment briefings in which they prepare wills and get insurance, among other things. They also sign powers of attorney for their financial affairs, and it’s here where PMCU may counsel restraint.

Smith explains that credit union reps help Pendleton’s Marines prepare their powers of attorney, but suggest that they sign over only enough control to allow the families they leave behind to keep their households running.

Marines without families also face financial peril — themselves.

“We had a big contingent return recently, and many of the young Marines came back with more money (accumulated in their accounts via direct deposit) than they’d ever had before,” Smith says. “When they come back, they want it all in cash.”

That cash hunger means lines out the door of PMCU’s on-base branches, he adds, and a cash outflow in the mid-six figures. Then, Smith says with a kind of sad parental tone, they blow it on stereos, cars and other toys of immediate gratification.

Although he laments such impulsive choices, Smith understands them.

“These young Marines go into a combat situation that is life-and-death. They could die anytime, any day, and they know it. When they come back and find maybe $10,000 in their account to do whatever they want with, they want to live and enjoy life, because they appreciate that they could have died.”

Pendleton’s unit commanders are also aware of the hazardous combination of youth and money, Smith reports, and they keep PMCU’s representatives busy with requests for financial education for budgeting, how to balance a checkbook, how to buy a car, insurance, how to buy a home — even how to prepare financially for discharge or retirement.

“It’s becoming more important on military bases,” he says, “as the Department of Defense recognizes that more and more separations (from the military) are for financial reasons. Each Marine or soldier is irreplaceable, in terms of the money and time to train a new person.”

Credit unions such as PMCU rely heavily on technology to keep their active-duty military members in touch with their money.

With members stationed in Japan and Guam, for example, USA Federal Credit Union uses Internet banking and ATMs to give its 10,000 active-duty members fast account access.“Young enlisted people are very transaction-oriented,” says CEO Mary Cunningham, thus the ATMs at her 11 branches in Japan and Guam are kept busy dispensing the long green. Internet banking also helps overseas personnel co-manage household funds with spouses still stateside.

Although USA Federal doesn’t have waves of deployed and returning members like Pacific Marine, Cunningham has noticed that traffic has slowed down at a few of its branches in San Diego, especially 32nd Street and the Naval Amphibious Base on Coronado.

Geri Dillingham, executive vice president of North Island Credit Union, says about 20 percent of its members are on active duty. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

“The Amphibious Base branch had become a ghost town because of the special operations deployments in Afghanistan,” Cunningham says, “so we have done a deal for North Island Credit Union to take it over and automate it. They are really doing it as a favor to us. As credit unions, our bottom-line interest is still in serving members, not in out-competing one another.” The Amphibious Base branch closed Oct. 29.

North Island Credit Union itself has about 20 percent of its members on active duty, says Geri Dillingham, executive vice president of member relations. On a membership of 130,000, that equals 26,000 people, many of whom ship in and out on one of the three carrier strike groups that call North Island Naval Air Station home.

“We can see a fairly large swing when one of the carriers comes in,” Dillingham says, “but it occurs fairly regularly and predictably, so we’re used to handling it. Deployments are a regular part of business for us.”

North Island also uses online banking, online bill paying, toll-free telephones and a network of 15,000 ATMs worldwide for its members.

Like all financial institutions, credit unions are bound by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act of 2003. Among the law’s provisions is the requirement that interest rates on pre-enlistment loans incurred by active duty personnel be cut to 6 percent.

Grace “Sam” Meyer is the vice president of operations and lending at Miramar Federal Credit Union. She says current interest rates are low enough that the 6 percent ceiling is irrelevant to most members’ loans. Even so, she says, an active duty member would have to request interest rate relief available under the 2003 Act.

Although less than 5 percent of her credit union’s membership is on active duty, she says Miramar Federal is no stranger to working with the financial woes of military families. Most often it is a stateside spouse needing help.

“Not long ago a wife came in whose husband was a soldier killed in Japan in a plane crash,” Meyer says. “She wanted to return the new vehicle she had recently gotten a loan on. But we worked something out to reduce payments and extend them out a little longer. We always do things like that. We make exceptions when members need them.”