Credit Unions Slip Again With Credit Cards in April
Auto loans make a small gain from March despite the fifth drop in a row for new cars.
Credit unions continued to lose market share for credit cards in April, and their new auto loan portfolios took a dent for the fifth month in a row.
However, a new report from CUNA showed the total loan portfolio for the nation’s 5,256 credit unions surpassed $1.2 trillion for the first time in April, rising 5% from April 2020 on the continuing strength of first mortgages.
The Fed’s G-19 Consumer Credit Report released Monday showed credit unions held $57.7 billion in credit card debt; its lowest level since April 2018. The April 2021 balance was 7% lower than a year earlier and marked the fourth consecutive month-to-month decline.
Credit card balances have typically fallen month-to-month from January through March, but start to show gains in April, based on 10-year averages of Fed data for all lenders from 2010 through 2019. The average March-to-April gain was 0.40% over those years.
The good news is that among all lenders, credit card balances rose from March to April, albeit by a bare 0.07%.
The bad news for credit unions was that the March-to-April gain was almost entirely at banks, where balances showed a 0.13% gain, while credit union balances fell 0.92%.
As a result, credit unions’ share of the market fell to 6.3%, down from 6.4% in both March 2021 and April 2020.
The road was also bumpy for credit unions in auto lending in April.
CUNA’s Credit Union Monthly Estimates released June 4 showed new car loans stood at $138.5 billion on April 30, down 5.6% from April 2020 and down 0.3% from March 2021. On the bright side, it was the smallest in the string of month-to-month drops. The previous four declines ranged from 0.6% to 2.4%.
Used car loans stood at $245.7 billion on April 30, up 6.1% from April 2020 and up 0.6% from March 2021.
Overall auto loans were $384.3 billion in April, up 1.5% from a year earlier and 0.2% from the previous month.
CUNA’s report also showed credit unions had 128.1 million members in April, 3.3% more than a year earlier.
Other changes from April 2020 to April 2021 in the report included:
- Loans per member grew 1.7% to $9,404.
- Savings per member grew 16.5% to $13,750.
- Savings grew 20.3% to $1.76 trillion.
- Fixed-rate first mortgages rose 13.6% to $416.8 billion.
- Adjustable-rate first mortgages fell 1.9% to $119.3 billion.
- Second mortgages fell 13.1% to $28.9 billion.
- Home equity lines of credit fell 7.3% to $54.2 billion.