WASHINGTON–With the release of its newest analysis of credit union performance, America’s Credit Unions has also introduced a new dashboard for the data included in its Monthly Credit Union Lending Estimates.
According to the association, the new evaluation tool provides month-over-month, year-to-date, and year-over-year loan growth data for U.S. credit unions, and further allows comparison of credit union data to other lenders, such as banking institutions, mortgage companies, credit card companies and auto financing companies.
The Key Trends
According to the January data reported by America’s Credit Unions, key trends include:
- Generally slow loan growth reflects consumer caution against a backdrop of stubbornly high inflation, still-high interest rates and modest declines in consumer confidence
- Credit union loans outstanding increased by only 0.21% in January – nearly matching the previous month’s 0.22% gain and outpacing the 0.13% in January 2024. Over the past 20 years, typical credit union January loan growth (0.45%) is more than double the recent reading.
- Home equity lines of credit stood out in January, increasing 1.34%, while both second mortgages (1.04%) and credit cards (0.92%) continue to reflect strong monthly gains.
- Year-over-year credit union loan growth also slowed, reflected in a 1.6% increase in total outstanding balances. That compares to a 12-month increase of 5.3% in the year ending January 2024 and a 15.4% increase in the year ending January 2023, America’s Credit Unions said.
- On a year-over-year basis home equity lines of credit (16.6%), second mortgage loans (10.5%) and credit cards (7.2%) reflect the biggest annual gains.
About the Data
America’s Credit Unions said its analysis is generated from the Equifax Analytic Dataset (ADS), an anonymized random sample of credit report data that tracks 10% of all U.S. consumers with a social security number.
