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Unemployment and gas prices are both down, and interest rates may soon be heading up — all of which spells good news for credit unions' bottom lines. That's the verdict from a number of CFOs and economists who spoke with Credit Union Journal and predicted that while sunnier times may be on the way, CUs can do more now to bolster the bottom line later.

WASHINGTON — The first quarter of 2015 might have been a weak one for overall GDP growth, but credit unions exhibited strength in a number of areas.

Julie Sizer has been named chief bank operations officer at First Citizens Bank in Raleigh, N.C.

Prudential Bancorp in Philadelphia is setting the stage for a new chief executive.

Prosperity Bancshares in Houston has named a new president.

SVB Financial Group in Santa Clara, Calif., has appointed a former U.S. Treasury official to its board.

Fifth Third Bancorp revised downward its first-quarter profit by 6%, or 2 cents per share, after the Cincinnati company booked a $30 million impairment on aircraft leases.

Deutsche Bank has hired the former president of the Clearing House Association to take charge of its stress testing process.

The chief executive of CertusBank in Greenville, S.C., has officially stepped down after undergoing heart surgery.

Presidio Bank in San Francisco has added longtime California banking executive James Westfall to its board of directors. He will serve on the bank's audit and asset liability committees.

A new study by a consumer group found that checking account disclosures at the nation's largest banks have improved, but overdraft fee practices are largely unchanged from previous years.

First Farmers and Merchants Bank in Columbia, Tenn., has hired a former Regions Financial banker to run its wealth management operations.

BankUnited in Miami Lakes, Fla., has hired Hakim Kassam, a former Wells Fargo banker, to run its small business finance department.

A former chief financial officer at Bank of McKenney in McKenney, Va., has been indicted on two counts of embezzlement.

In responding to a fan Monday on Twitter, Rowling was asked the full name of the character "Moaning Myrtle," a ghost that haunts Hogwarts, where Harry Potter goes to school. Rowling's reply raised a few eyebrows.

Top-performing community banks have found different ways to provide double-digit returns, despite numerous challenges facing the banking industry.

Looking past standard gauges of return on equity and return on assets, bank investors have wide opinions on what makes a bank a high-performing institution relative to peers.

A number of this year's top-performing banks have been able to ride the highs and lows of the economic cycle to still produce long-term returns to investors.

What makes for a high-performing bank? We take an in-depth look at what drove profitability for the institutions at the top of our annual rankings, all of which are based on three-year average returns on equity. See the list of banks and thrifts with under $2 billion in assets or the mid-tiers with $2 billion to $10 billion of assets. Stay tuned as those with $10 billion to $50 billion of assets are still to come.

Rates are low and compliance costs are rising. But banks with $2 billion or less in assets still have momentum in several key areas, based on data compiled by Capital Performance Group.