“We will come to you,” the CEO of Lakota Federal Credit Union tells residents of Pine Ridge Reservation.
By Connie Aitcheson
When Lakota Federal Credit Union opened its doors in 2012 in Kyle, South Dakota, access to a financial institution was severely limited for the people of Pine Ridge Reservation. Up to 60% of community members were unbanked — a proportion that bank leaders believe has since decreased thanks to initiatives such as Lakota FCU’s mobile banking unit.
“It’s always been about accessibility, for us to be in communities that can’t up and just come to Kyle on a whim,” says Shayna Ferguson, manager and CEO of Lakota FCU, a federally-certified community development financial institution with about $15.9 million in total assets.
“We will come to you,” says Ferguson, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Many of her staff are from Pine Ridge themselves. “We want to be able to serve you the best we can, and if that means us going to your community once a month, twice a month, three times a month, we’re going to be there.”
Lakota FCU serves about 4,250 members across Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Nation; the Rosebud Reservation; the tribal lands of all of Oglala Lakota; and Jackson, Bennett, Todd, Mellette, Trip and Gregory counties in South Dakota.
Altogether, the credit union’s potential membership is 40,000 people. Residents of these communities face various obstacles to reaching a financial institution, so last year, the credit union launched a mobile banking bus unit to reach residents where they are.
“We want to be very convenient for everybody because we realize the struggles,” Ferguson tells Next City. “Not everybody has means to transportation. Just being able to relay convenient services has always been our biggest goal.”
The bus serves as a mobile branch, visiting each reservation and community twice a week. It offers all the branch’s financial products, including loans for single-family housing and recreational loans for trailers and motorcycles. Ferguson says community members are increasingly utilizing these services.
“We’ve only been out, not even quite a year, but people are starting to pay attention to the schedule and it’s definitely picking up,” she says. This along with the launch of their new website is helping with accessibility: “That definitely increased our membership with these remote places,” says Ferguson.
According to Inclusiv Capital, studies estimate the number of unbanked residents on the Pine Ridge Reservation to be between 36% to 60%. Ferguson says she strongly doubts that up to 60% of the population could still be unbanked, but she intends to conduct an updated survey assessing the population. “I feel like that has definitely changed,” she says.
The credit union says that on its very first day of operation, the Lakota Federal Credit Union opened 26 new accounts and made one loan.
“We actually were pretty lucky when we first opened our doors…Social Security was requiring their recipients to have bank accounts,” Ferguson says. “The older generations, we were here to walk them through that process…they were kind of forced to get an account.”
Lakota FCU’s demographics have changed significantly since.
“We have generational accounts now,” Ferguson says. “We have accounts for the grandma, the daughter has an account, now the great-granddaughter has an account.”
Housing is another persistent issue for the credit union. “Homes are hard to come by, and that’s always how it’s been in Indian country across the United States,” says Ferguson. “We have homes that are generational homes, that might have the grandmother’s, the daughter’s, now the daughter’s children’s.”
In 2021, Lakota FCU and the Lakota Funds started a homeownership initiative and collaborations targeting Native American homeownership. This made Lakota FCU the first Native CDFI to obtain approval from the USDA Rural Development's Single-Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program. The two organizations teach classes on home ownership and financial literacy.
Among the credit union’s clients, “I think more and more people are realizing that home ownership is possible,” says Ferguson. “It’s always been a need there, but now that there’s a possibility of making it happen I don’t ever see it slowing down.”
This story is part of our series CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is developed in partnership with Next City.