The initial wave of credit unions’ fourth quarter filings show credit unions originating $120.5 billion in loans throughout 2011, a 5.1% increase over 2010 levels for the same 3,104 credit unions.
Consumer and member business loans were the strongest growth areas of these credit unions’ loan originations, according to Callahan & Associates’ FirstLook data. Robust growth in these categories, as well as steady first mortgage originations, fueled positive outstanding loan balance growth of 1.59% for 2011, despite selling $17.6 billion in first mortgages during the year.
Member business loan originations saw the biggest percentage growth over 2010 numbers, with 13.0% growth during the year. But consumer loans had a much larger amount of dollar growth of $7.2 billion and also posted solid 11.3% year-over-year growth.
Quarterly overall loan origination volume was at its highest in 2011 in the fourth quarter at these credit unions, which originated $33.2 billion in loans that quarter, up from the $32.0 billion in the same quarter in 2010.
First mortgage originations were much stronger in the second half of the year, with fixed-rate mortgage originations making up over 76% of all first mortgage originations as members took advantage of the historically low-rate environment. Credit unions reported the second-highest dollar volume of mortgage originations on record in the fourth quarter of 2011, and the highest dollar volume of mortgage of all the fourth quarters on record.