Credit unions reported higher profits in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to data from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
In NCUA’s Quarterly Credit Union Data Summary, the regulator reported the industry posting profits of $14.1 billion in the fourth quarter, up 8.8 percent from $13 billion a year earlier.
NCUA said its report covered 5,236 federally insured credit unions with 120.4 million members, up 4.2 million members in 2019 from a year ago.
Total assets for the full year rose 7.8 percent from 2018 to $1.57 trillion, and total outstanding loans gained 6.2 percent in 2019 to $1.1 trillion.
Consistent with long-running trends, NCUA said credit unions with assets of at least $1 billion reported the strongest growth in loans, membership and net worth over the year ending in the fourth quarter of 2019. Credit unions with less than $500 million in assets reported declines in those categories over the year.
Other highlights from the quarterly report include:
- The delinquency rate at federally insured credit unions was 71 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2019, unchanged from one year earlier. The net charge-off ratio was 56 basis points, down slightly from 58 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2018.
- Insured shares and deposits rose $85 billion, or 7.4 percent, over the four quarters of 2019, to $1.2 trillion.
- The loan-to-share ratio stood at 84.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, down from 85.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018.
- The credit union system’s net worth ratio was 11.37 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, compared with 11.30 percent one year earlier.
- The net interest margin for federally insured credit unions was $47.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019, or 3.2 percent of average assets. That compares with $44.3 billion, or 3.1 percent of average assets, in the fourth quarter of 2018.
- The return on average assets for federally insured credit unions was 94 basis points over the year ending in the fourth quarter of 2019, up from 92 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2018. The median return on average assets across all federally insured credit unions was 60 basis points, up 4 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2018.
- The number of credit unions with a low-income designation rose to 2,605 in the fourth quarter of 2019 from 2,554 one year earlier.