FedChoice Is Ready For The Next Government Shutdown – Whenever It Comes

Last fall’s historic 43-day government shutdown is in the rearview mirror; now, the team at FedChoice Federal Credit Union ($447.1M, Lanham, MD) is gearing up for the next one.

The 2025 shutdown was the longest on record but another could be coming quickly if Congress can’t reach a deal to fund the government before Jan. 31, 2026. If that happens, thousands of federal workers across the country will once again be furloughed or forced to work without pay until lawmakers reach a deal.

Whatever happens, FedChoice has a game plan. The Maryland-based cooperative has been here plenty of times before — after all, about 73% of it current membership has the potential to be impacted in these scenarios.

“Every time a shutdown looks like it’s coming up, we grab a cross-functional team and start having conversations because it’s not a singular impact for the credit union, it’s an across-the-board impact,” says Christine Wright, vice president of marketing.

That team typically comprises 17 employees from across the organization, including lending, business intelligence, the call center, fraud and compliance, and more.

The team meets at least once each week during the shutdown, although departmental teams may meet more frequently. The shutdown team goes round-robin style discussing what each team is seeing, pain points, where help is needed, and more.

“We triage,” says Al Gregory, vice president of lending. “If consumer lending is backed up, we assign people while all the stakeholders are together. It’s a lot easier than doing that by email or committee.”

A running Teams chat also helps keep different departments abreast of new developments and emerging issues.

Low-Hanging Fruit

One of the key focuses of the shutdown team is finding “low-hanging fruit,” or easy fixes to help members and staff.

“The lowest-hanging fruit we had [during the fall shutdown] was taking care of our coworkers — their mental health, their workloads,” Gregory says. “We have to make sure they’re just as well taken care of as our members.”

FedChoice took in 40% of its annual application volume (either membership or lending) during the 43-day shutdown. Approved loans totaled more than $2.6 million in that time, which meant employees were scrambling to process loans. One easy fix for members and employees alike was a new underwriting matrix intended to speed up the loan-origination process.

Member feedback shows even government employees who are members of other credit unions turn to FedChoice because it helps when others can’t or won’t, or it is simply faster, Gregory says.

The shutdown team also works across departments to understand the most common pain points the credit union needs to monitor to serve members most effectively. That was especially important in the last shutdown.

“We did the best we could,” Gregory says. “None of us knew this was going to last this long, but we worked together to get the right reporting out because the board wants to see this stuff, the executive committee wants to see this stuff, and all the employees do, too.”

Another Round Around The Corner?

The team’s work changed as the 2025 shutdown dragged on.

At the outset, the focus was almost business as usual from a product and process perspective, Wright says. But as the shutdown dragged on, the credit union became more data-driven to find inefficiencies and close gaps to improve service. • That covered everything from tweaking lending guidelines to rethinking staff notifications and more. Although the team could do some of that in-house, it also turned to FedChoice’s LOS from MeridianLink for reports from the Insights platform.

Gregory points out that staff also spotted issues in loan queues, and such feedback from staff helped improve processes.

“We were transparent that if something isn’t going right, bring it to the group,” he says. “We want less of that sidebar chatter, and the only way we can do that is to identify what needs to be fixed and fix it quickly.”

The shutdown team recently held a post-mortem with an eye toward making tweaks in advance of another possible shutdown at the end of this month.

“We have the opportunity for this to be back-to-back, without a lot of downtime in between,” Wright says. “If this one happens we need to take a hard look at the impacts of the last one on the membership. Part of what we did in the post-mortem is look at how members responded. We don’t have a lot of breathing room as we face the potential of another shutdown, so what are the impacts if we put everything back into place, both for FedChoice and for our members?”

Lessons Learned

FedChoice operated with a TIP charter for many years, a move that spread its employee base well beyond the DC Metro, and transitioned to a multiple common bond charter in mid-2025. One of the ways it showed up for its SEG partners was by hosting an on-site food truck to provide lunch for federal employees. All the credit union required was an employee badge.

“We didn’t have as many people as we wanted, but it was a great recharge for staff and an opportunity to connect with members one-on-one,” Wright says. “We talked about loans and mental health, and lunch was on us.”

Beyond finding those opportunities for connection and relaxation, Gregory adds that the biggest lesson in these situations is to simply remember to breathe.

“Remember that the folks working with you are your teammates and not your enemies,” he says. “When you need to take a lap, take a lap; when you need to breathe, take a walk outside and come back to it. Those 300 applications in your queue will still be there.”

He adds, “There is a light at the end of the tunnel — and it’s not a train.”