Headlines


Washington


CU System


Market


Products & Services


Consumer


Print Today’s News


Photo Gallery


Videos


Monthly Top 10


Archive


Headlines via Email

Enter your email address:
text or HTML

RSS Feed Newsnow Headlines via RSS
What is RSS?


Contact News Now

News Now LiveWire

Most CUs will provide wage increases for at least some of their employees, according to CUNA's just-released Small CU Staff Salary Survey. 12 hours ago

St. L Post Dispatch on GAO report:Consumers may not benefit from altering Interchange system;would cut card competition. http://ow.ly/ETyX 13 hours ago

CUNA's Hampel: Consumer holiday spending will be up slightly from last year. See Tues NN. 17 hours ago

NCCUL and WOCCU met with Romanian CUs this week. The CUs are experiencing growth and want to increase their public relations efforts. 4 days ago

Kent Buckham has been named by NCUA as director of the newly created Office of Consumer Protection. The 7-person dept. launches in Jan. 4 days ago

Sign up; more tweets...

CU savings growth in historic slump

MADISON, Wis. (10/4/05)--Savings balances at credit unions decreased 0.9% in August, resulting in the slowest 12-month savings growth on record.

Year-to-date savings growth was 1.6%, according to the Monthly Credit Union Estimates from Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Economics and Statistics.

Click to view larger image Click for larger view
Savings clocked in at $583.6 billion, compared with $566.9 billion a year ago.

The "super slow savings growth" is due to three things, said Mike Schenk, vice president of economics and statistics. First, American consumers already don't save their money.

Second, credit union pricing on savings is slightly less favorable as banks aggressively increase their certificate rate. However, credit unions are still paying higher rates on savings, he added.

And, third, the increase in market rates changed the yields in money market accounts.

"With almost all of savings growth typically happening in the first half of the year, we don't expect to see a huge savings growth for the rest of the year," said Schenk.

Certificates were the only savings category to increase, with a 1.6% rise to 25% of all credit union savings compared with 22.2% a year earlier.

Click to view larger image Click for larger view
Loans outstanding increased 1.7% in August to $462.7 billion--up to 7.9% for the year to date.

New-auto loans led with an increase of 3.3% and accounted for 17.8% of total loans outstanding, compared with 17.1% in August 2004.

"It's a bit of a relief that credit union new-auto loans have grown relatively quickly," Schenk said. "Credit unions are more easily able to compete with loans prices with the large automakers offering employee pricing instead of 0% financing."

Compared with August 2004, loans have increased 10.5% from $418.7 billion. The loan-to-savings ratio increased to 79.3% in August from 77.2% in July.

The last time the loan-to-asset ratio reached 80% was in 2000, and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) did take notice, Schenk said.

"We're sort of at the point where they have expressed concern in the past," he said, adding that the loan-to-share ratio runs slightly less than loan-to-asset.



More CU/System

Copyright © 2009 - Credit Union National Association, Inc.