At the request of The Credit Union Journal, Callahan & Associates has created this page of data recognizing peak-performing credit unions over the past five years.
Each quarter The Credit Union Journal has highlighted credit unions identified by Callahan's as providing superior service as measured by the company's unique Return to Member rankings. On this page, Callahan's has crunched the numbers to identify 20 credit unions in each of four asset size categories that have consistenly performed well during the past five years. (Please note that credit unions of less than $20 million in assets are not included because this group has only recently begun filing quarterly data).
Determining how a credit union stands relative to its peers is a complex issue. Callahan & Associates, Washington, D.C., has attempted to do just that, however, with what it calls its Return of the Member (ROM) ranking system. Callahan's publishes its ROM rankings quarterly, based on the information reported by credit unions in their Call 5300 reports. This particular set of data, however, is a special ROM ranking Callahan's put together for The CU Journal reflecting a composite of five year's worth of ROM performance.
According to Callahan & Associates, Return of the Member is designed to help a credit union analyze its member service levels.
Callahan's describes it as an "economic profile based on the value of your credit union's products and services.
"This includes a computation of member service levels, stressing the importance of striving for full member usage of a credit union's products."
The core components of Return of the Member are three functions: lending, savings, and member usage.
The first component is called Return to the Savers, which measures how well a credit union is doing in providing deposit services back to members.
The second component is called Return to the Borrowers, which takes into consideration that credit unions were created to provide credit to members at a reasonable cost.
And the final component is member service usage, which measures how efficiently a credit union provides and promotes services to its members.
Callahan & Associates noted that the leaders in the latter category are credit unions with a high number of core account relationships with their members.
A value between one and 100 is assigned to each credit union depending on the performance in the three core areas of Return of the Member.
For readers interested in more information from Callahan & Associates, contact the firm at (800) 446-7453. Readers Can Offer Their Thoughts To The Credit Union Journal by Writing P.O. Box 4387, W. Palm Beach, FL 33402, by calling (888) 832-2929.
