While the credit union sector continued to consolidate, outstanding real estate investments continued to grow. Home lending, however, fell.
As of Sept. 30,
there were 6,090 federally insured credit unions in business. Credit union count retreated by 69 from three months earlier.
The decline in the number of credit unions
was more severe versus the same point in 2014, when 6,350 credit unions were operating nationally.
The
National Credit Union Administration reported the data.
“Consolidation in the financial industry has been a long-running trend,” the report said.
Membership at the country’s credit unions finished the third-quarter 2015 at 102,138,141, growing from 101,084,138 at the end of the second quarter and
98.7 million as of the end of the third-quarter 2014.
Data from Callahan & Associates indicate that first-mortgage originations in the sector totaled
$33.116 billion during the three months ended Sept. 30, 2015.
Business was off from $35.650 three months earlier but better than $26.9 billion a year earlier.
During the first-nine months of 2015, first-mortgage production amounted to $94.923 billion.
The latest activity left first mortgages outstanding at $315.5 billion, rising three percent from June 30, 2015, and 10 percent from Sept. 30, 2014, according to NCUA’s data.
Callahan said that “other” real estate originations came in at $6.953 billion during the most-recent period, down from the second quarter’s $7.121 billion but more than the third-quarter 2014’s $5.6 billion.
That left credit unions with $73.5 billion in other mortgages as of the end of September 2015, according to NCUA. The total ascended two percent from three months earlier and has risen three percent from 12 months earlier.
Earnings for the financial institutions totaled $2.3 billion in the third-quarter 2015, down four percent from the same three-month period last year, the regulator reported.
