CU Lending Trends: First Mortgage & Used Car Lending Gains

Used cars and first mortgages again had the strongest gains for credit union portfolios in February. New car loans were flat from a year ago, while credit cards and home equity grew slower than the rest of the portfolio, according to CUNA.

CUNA’s latest “Monthly Credit Union Estimates” showed first mortgages continue to be the strongest gainer in portfolios despite the national drop in originations. In part, that’s because refinance activity can cancel out on the balance sheet, and in part because credit unions have been selling fewer first mortgages on the secondary market.

First mortgages grew 11.3% to $587.8 billion from a year ago, and the 0.9% gain from January is a full percentage point better than the average pre-pandemic drop of 0.1% for Februarys from 2015 to 2020.

Second-lien mortgages grew 3.4% to $87.7 billion from a year ago, but its components took different paths. Second mortgages fell 8% to $27.5 billion, while home equity lines of credit rose 9.6% to $60.2 billion.

Total loans grew 9.6% to $1.31 trillion from a year earlier, and rose 1.1% from the previous month. January-to-February gains typically were 0.1% before the pandemic.

Savings were $1.85 billion, up 11.6% from February 2021, and up 1.6% from the previous month. While gains sound large, the savings fever has subsided, and January-to-February gains were among the highest of the year with the help of IRS tax refunds.

In fact, the 1.6% January-to-February gains for 2021 and 2022 were weak compared with the average 2.2% gains in the pre-pandemic Februarys from 2015 to 2020.

Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke on Thursday put much of the blame for lagging used car sales in February and March on the IRS running behind on delivering refunds.

Whatever the IRS effect, credit unions did quite well with used cars at least in February. They held $272.3 billion in used car loans Feb. 28, up 12.3% from a year earlier. The January-to-February gain was 1.1%, compared with an average gain of 0.4% in pre-pandemic years.

New car loans still look weak, but they had a good month. The $145.3 billion in new car loans in the portfolio Feb. 28 was 0.5% higher from a year ago, and its 0.2% gain from January compared with a typical 0.1% drop.

Credit cards behaved typically for a February as consumers tended to shave their balances. But they started with balances that still lagged in February 2020, the month before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.

The Fed’s G-19 “Consumer Credit Report” released Thursday showed credit unions held $63.6 billion in credit card debt on Feb. 28, up 5.4% from a year earlier and down 0.9% from January.

Credit unions’ share of the U.S. credit card market was 6.7% in February, compared with 6.3% in January and 6.5% in February 2021.

Banks held $920 billion in credit card debt, up 11.3% from a year earlier and down 0.3% from January. Banks’ share was 90.5% in February, unchanged from January and up from 89.6% a year earlier.

Credit card balances fell sharply in the early months of the pandemic, bottoming out in February 2021 before beginning a consistent recovery.

Earlier data from the Fed’s G-19 report showed that credit unions were poking their noses above the February 2020 pre-pandemic mark in December, but its report released Thursday contained downward revisions for October through January that showed credit unions still have yet to come up for air.

Fed revisions lowered credit card balances at credit unions by 1.6%, or just over $1 billion, in both December and January, and made smaller downward revisions for last October and November. The Fed made no change to credit card balances at banks for December, and made negligible downward revisions for the other three months.

The tide of seasonal borrowing will turn this spring, as consumers generally take on more credit card debt before the next post-holiday purge.