NEW YORK-The credit union community has apparently recovered from the worst recession in 75 years, but thousands of small credit unions are still being left behind, with negative growth and negligible or non-existent profitability, according to a new CUNA analysis.
While the industry as a whole reported booming membership growth of around 2.2% for the previous 12 months, all of that growth appears to have been among the nation's biggest credit unions, said CUNA economists Mike Schenk and Bill Hampel during America's Credit Union Conference here last week.
Data compiled by CUNA shows that for the past 12 months, credit unions over $100 million in assets had an average 3.6% membership growth, while those between $20 million and $100 million had 1% membership growth. But those between $5 million and $20 million had negative growth of 0.9% and those under $5 million had negative 1.6% membership growth.
"We talk about tremendous membership growth overall, but smaller institutions are not seeing the same membership growth," said Schenk.
Income, But Not From All
Similar trends have emerged for both loan and savings growth and for asset quality, most notably loan charge-offs, according to Schenk, with credit unions under $20 million in assets reporting far lower growth rates, even as the economy has rebounded from the recession, and is considered recovered.
As a result, smaller credit unions are lagging far behind in profitability, too.
While the industry earned an average of 83 basis points for the past 12 months, credit unions under $5 million were at negative 33 BPs; those from $5 million to $20 million were at negative 3 BPs, and all of the industry's $8 billion in net income came from credit unions $20 million and above.
