The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) released its latest quarterly report on the credit union industry, finding that assets and deposits in federally insured credit unions rose in the first quarter of 2020 from a year earlier.
The industry posted profits of $8.4 billion in the quarter, down from a year earlier, in part because of a jump in provisioning for loan and lease losses or credit loss expenses.
NCUA found that there were 5,195 federally insured credit unions with 121.4 million members at the end of the first quarter of 2020. The number of federally insured credit unions declined to 5,195 in the first quarter of 2020 from 5,335 a year earlier. In the first quarter of 2020, there were 3,255 federal credit unions and 1,940 federally insured, state-chartered credit unions.
Total assets at those institutions were up 8.8 percent from a year earlier, to $1.64 trillion, while deposits rose 7.5 percent, to $1.3 trillion.
Outstanding loans also were on the rise in the first quarter, up 6.5 percent to $1.1 trillion, as members took advantage of lending opportunities. Yet with the increased lending, delinquency rates remained in check – the delinquency rate rose 6 basis points from a year earlier to 63 basis points, and the net charge-off ratio rose just 1 basis point to 58.
Profits fell $5.6 billion, or 40 percent, from a year earlier, with the pandemic taking hold of the country in March. The return on average assets also fell sharply, from 95 basis points in the first quarter of 2019 to 53 basis points in 2020.
Federally insured credit unions added 4.1 million members over the year, and credit union membership in these institutions reached 121.4 million in the first quarter of 2020.