IOWA CITY, Iowa-Jeff Disterhoft believes the industry is paying attention to efficient growth.
The CEO of the $2-billion University of Iowa Community CU certainly understands the importance of efficiency. The credit union's business model is based on efficiency (Credit Union Journal, Jan. 14), and the CU's 2% ROA and 48% efficiency ratio reflects that.
"The math still indicates to me that most larger shops are efficient," said Disterhoft. "I subscribe to Callahan's Peer to Peer rankings and I downloaded all the data for the approximately 7,000 credit unions and looked at their efficiency ratios and growth. I dropped out the outliers, and looked at credit unions that had efficiency ratios less than 200% and greater than 31%, still 95% of all U.S. credit unions. I don't see any indication that as credit unions grow in size, at least mathematically, they become less focused on efficiency and more focused on growth."
