If you can't trust corporate credit unions, who can you trust? That's a question percolating through the credit union universe as natural person credit unions face up to the reality that they probably will have large amounts of cash on hand that needs to be stuck someplace. And as good as CDs may be for some of it, the dismal returns offered are not likely to creep much higher in the next year. So, where to put the money?

"The corporate credit union model is changing quite a bit. More investing will be done by the credit unions on their own. But traditionally credit unions haven't done much investing on their own," said Jim Toliver, president of Balance Sheet Solutions, which recently launched a series of programs to help credit unions do their own investing. "The challenge credit unions will have is knowing how to determine which investments are safe. They will need to develop a sophisticated investment discipline," he added.

Know that the challenge just may be getting bigger, mainly because lending is stifled and credit unions that are making home mortgages in volume are preferring to sell off those loans, especially the long-term fixed-rate paper. "We don't want duration risks, so we sell off 30-year fixed-rate mortgages," said Joe Schroeder, CEO of Ventura County Credit Union in California.