Over the past 24 years, when banks were pulling back on lending to businesses, it appears credit unions were quietly and consistently stepping in to fill the void.

In a rare report on credit unions from the Small Business Administration, "The Growing Impact of Credit Unions on Small Business Lending," data from the agency's Office of Advocacy looked at how much business lending at credit unions responded to a decrease in bank business lending. The report also examined the effects of changes in bank business lending on business lending by credit unions.

"We found that small business loans at credit unions tended to partially offset declines in business loans at banks," wrote James Wilcox, author of the report and professor of financial institutions at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. "Credit unions' increasing share of SBLs and the estimated offsets suggest that [they] are increasingly important sources of SBLs as a longer run development and in response to fluctuations in SBLs at banks."