Sure, credit unions are not-for-profit financial institutions, but that doesn’t mean they can exist without steady sources of income.
See how credit unions are making money and deepening relationships this week on CreditUnions.com:
Firefighters First Credit Union expeceds to make $250,000 in net income in 2015 from its in-house insurance agency, a revenue stream the California credit union expects to push to $1 million per year in the not-too-distant future.
The credit union which has five branches in Los Angeles and Northern California and primarily serves professional firefighters and their families opened Firefighter Insurance Services in 2010 and currently offers 4,800 auto, home, commercial, motorcycle, RV, boat, umbrella, life, and earthquake policies from 10 different insurance companies, including Mercury, CSE, and Safeco.
See how the credit union plans to grow in How Firefighters First Credit Union Plans To Hit $1 Million In Net Income, by Callahan senior writer Marc Rapport.
It is an NCUA mandate that a credit union’s board of directors have a working familiarity with basic finance and accounting practices. That’s for volunteers. Shouldn’t a credit union’s management staff have the same working knowledge of ratios that effect the credit union’s performance?
21 Ratios All Credit Unions Must Know covers basic concepts, definitions, and formulas every credit union volunteer and member of management should know. Download the PDF today!
Like many of its peers, Rogue Credit Union has enjoyed strong deposit growth in recent years. Helping that along has been loyalty programs that aim to build even deeper relationships with members.
We know that credit unions are different, says president and CEO Gene Pelham. The opportunity we have is to educate members on the benefits of ownership of their credit union as they make their financial decisions and to think of the credit union in a more holistic way.
Rogue’s solution is its new Rogue Rewards loyalty program, which the credit union launched in February with the Rogue Rewards Loyalty Dividend and the opening of an Ownership Savings Account for every member. Rogue deposited Loyalty Dividends totaling $2.5 million overnight into the accounts, and Pelham says the feedback from members has been overwhelmingly positive.
See how Rogue Credit Union beats the market and its peer averages with share- and membership-building loyalty and payback accounts in How Rogue Builds Relationships, Deposits With Loyalty Programs by Callahan contributor Ted Goldwyn.
As of first quarter 2016, credit unions held $391.1 billion in investments and cash, an essentially flat growth rate from the same period in 2015. Learn more about how the industry’s investment portfolio performed in Investments By The Numbers.
Generations Federal Credit Union doesn’t have the largest investment portfolio its total of $145.2M is about $50M lower than that of credit union peers with assets from $500M-$1B at first quarter 2016 but it doesn’t need to for the credit union to find value. Not when its average yield on investments is 2.37%, higher than the 1.27% average of its asset-based peers, according to Callahan’s Peer-to-Peer data.
In An Investment For A Texas Credit Union, Marcel Theriot, vice president of finance for Generations, discusses the credit union’s approach to investing and why the investment portfolio warrants as much management as the loan portfolio.
Happy Reading!
