Even as the number of credit unions has been falling, the amount of outstanding first mortgages they hold continues to grow.
First mortgages on the balance sheets of the country’s credit unions totaled $267.786 billion as of Dec. 31, 2013.
Outstanding first-lien home loans expanded from the end of the previous year, when credit unions owned $246.225 billion.
The statistics were reported Monday by the National Credit Union Administration.
Credit unions also owned $71.038 billion in “other real estate loans,” down from $73.968 billion as of Dec. 31, 2012.
The NCUA said that 6,554 credit unions reported in the most recent report, fewer than the 6,819 reporting entities in the fourth-quarter 2012 report.
In fact, the number of credit unions has declined each year since at least 2009, when the NCUA reported 7,749 financial institutions.
Like first mortgages outstanding, credit union membership has expanded despite the dwindling number of entities.
There were 96,261,094 credit union members as of the end of last year, more than the 93,816,392 members as of a year earlier.
Net income in the sector declined to $8.140 billion in 2013 from $8.461 billion the prior year.
“The current rate environment is a challenge for profitability, but federally insured credit unions should avoid falling into the trap of over-concentration in long-term investments,” NCUA Board Chairman Debbie Matz said in the report. “It’s easy to get trapped chasing near-term profits by increasingly concentrating investments in long terms. That can imperil a credit union because it increases interest rate risk. The growth in 5-to-10 year investments of nearly 60 percent is cause for concern.
“For many credit unions it may be prudent, at this time, to accept lower return on assets to avoid exacerbating interest rate risks.”
