And then there were 16. That is the current count of corporate credit unions, after a year where all the institutions faced an Oct. 20 NCUA deadline to qualify as "adequately capitalized" per the regulator's calculus.

This represents more than a 50% decrease in the number of corporates that had been operational in mid-2010, by the count of Dianne Addington, CEO of Catalyst, a new corporate that arose in 2011 from a merger of Georgia Corporate with Southwest Bridge.

Ask John Fiore, however, and the CEO of Motorola Employees Credit Union and a leader in the drive that capitalized Members United Bridge as Alloya said, in effect, we ain't seen nothing yet. That is because Fiore sees a time in the near future where the number of surviving corporates will dip into the single digits. "This has become a volume business," said Fiore, and he does not believe that there will be ample volume to support more than a handful of corporates.