This week, CreditUnions.com finds two credit unions offering a VITA(L) service this tax season, another posting double-digit credit card growth, and analyzes the performance of Nebraska and Pennsylvania credit unions.
Here are five can’t-miss data points:
86.19%
Many credit unions across the industry have expressed the need to grow deposits. But in suburban Atlanta, Georgia United Credit Union has created an executive position with that mandate. Eric Jenkins is now Georgia United’s chief deposit services officer. In the past five years, the 163,412-member cooperative has increased deposits at a steady clip, but, like most credit unions its size, Georgia United’s loan-to-share ratio (86.19%) has risen in response to strong loan demand.
Read: What’s In A Name: Chief Deposit Services Officer
1,000s
ACMG and UVA Community are among thousands of participants in the IRS-sponsored Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. The program provides assistance in preparing returns to qualified taxpayers, not assistance in paying those taxes or in covering the bills that won’t get paid because the filer didn’t get the return they were counting on. The new tax law was intended to generally lower employees’ withholdings to better match their anticipated tax liability and boost their take-home pay. But the other side of that equation that a boost in take-home pay would mean less available for a refund still took millions of people by surprise as the W2s arrived and reality set in.
Read: Something Borrowed. Something Due: A VITA(L) Service At Tax Time Takes On New Importance
$99 Million
The Credit CARD Act of 2009 raised the bar for ensuring members have the ability to repay their obligations. Today, one Florida credit union employs sophisticated analytics to proactively raise members’ credit card limits and remain in compliance with the federal regulation. The credit union conducted its first automatic increase campaign in mid-2017 in partnership with Experian. Modeling provided by the credit reporting company assessed a member’s propensity for spend and utilization as well as debt-to-income and other underwriting criteria. Armed with this data, Suncoast provided credit line increases totaling approximately $99 million to about 48,000 accounts.
Read: A Strategy To Achieve Double-Digit Credit Card Growth
6.9%
The 60 member-owned credit unions in Nebraskans reported lending growth that exceeded national averages. Annual growth in loan originations was 6.9% at year-end, outpacing the 5.3% growth recorded by all 5,492 U.S. credit unions at year-end. In dollar terms, loan originations for credit unions in the Cornhusker State reached $1.7 billion, which helped push total originations for all U.S. credit unions to exceed $500 billion for the first time.
Read: Cornhusker Cooperatives Report Strong Year For 2018
78.8%
Pennsylvania credit unions originated more loans and reported fewer delinquencies than the national average in the past year. The state’s loan portfolio now totals a record $32.7 billion; however, the loan-to-share ratio for credit unions there is lower than the U.S. average 78.8% versus 85.5%, respectively.
Read: Keystone Co-Ops Lend Well To End The Year Well
Happy Reading!