Whales Gobble Up Sickly CU Minnows

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The trend in credit union mergers continued, with NCUA reporting yesterday several more troubled institutions are being merged into giant credit unions.

NCUA approved another merger for Wisconsin’s Summit CU; for MidFlorida CU; for Aloha Pacific FCU and TwinStar CU. And yesterday Navy FCU announced one of the biggest deals of the year, an acquisition of troubled USA FCU.

Summit CU, which acquired State Central CU earlier this year, was cleared to acquire tiny Dings Employees CU; MidFlorida CU to acquire ailing Bay Gulf FCU; Aloha Pacific will merge into it Word of Life FCU; and, TwinStar CU will acquire Renton CU, a one-time $7 million credit union that has lost money each of the past three years.

On Monday Navy FCU, the world’s largest credit union with almost $43 billion in assets, said it agreed to acquire USA FCU, another credit union serving its core Navy personnel, which had more than $700 million in assets as recently as 2008.

The number of mergers continues to decline, despite the growing number of credit unions in financial trouble, a function of the declining number of credit unions nationwide. Through the first seven months of 2010 there were 101 mergers, down from 117 for the same period last year.

Through the end of July there have been 118 credit unions disappear through merger or liquidation, according to CUNA. There were 7,713 credit unions as of July 31, down from 10,041 at the end of 2002. NCUA has been picking and choosing winners, merging out the most troubled credit unions into well-capitalized big ones.

Several other troubled credit unions are being merged out, according to NCUA. They are: Table Rock FCU, Shell Knob, Mo.; Grant County Community FCU, Marion, Ind.; Comala FCU, Montgomery, Ala.; East Central FCU, Louisville, Miss.; Kelly, in Troy, Mich. and Members Choice Pennsylvania, Duboise, Penn.