The report was bolstered by NCUA data drawn from Callahan’s Peer Suite, which showed credit unions held $485 billion in new and used car loans as of Dec. 31, down 3.5% from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the balance of all other auto loans rose 3% based on the Federal Reserve’s G-19 Consumer Credit Report released Feb. 7. Credit unions held 30.9% of the nation’s total auto loans, down from 32.3% a year earlier, when comparing NCUA data to Fed data.
With the Fed data, securitizations didn’t matter for the national pool. It did change numbers for banks and credit unions. But it’s a small change for credit unions. Their securitization sales have risen sharply in recent years, but rose only $261,000 in 2024. As a result, credit union securitizations only explain $261,000 of last year’s drop of about $15 billion.
And data from the FDIC and the Fed indicate banks aren’t doing much better – with the caveat being they do much more securitizations than credit unions.
The FDIC data showed banks held $538.9 billion in auto loans as of Sept. 30, 2024, down 2.1% from a year earlier. The FDIC hasn’t released fourth-quarter data yet, and the closest proxy from the Fed is the G-19’s report on consumer term loans, which include car loans, boat loans and personal loans.
The G-19 showed banks held $903.6 billion in term loans at Dec. 31, down -0.2%, which is actually an improvement. Their term loans have been showing 12-month declines for the past 18 months. The drops have been as deep as -2.1% as recently as November and reaching a nadir of -4.7% in April 2024. The lowest previous drop was -0.2% when the falling streak began in July 2023.
The falling streak for credit union term loans was shorter, but December’s drop didn’t show much slowing. Their term loans were $566.6 billion on Dec. 31, down 2.3% from a year earlier, not much better than the nadirs of -2.5% for October and November.
With the deterioration of auto lending, credit cards have been more important for maintaining portfolio growth at credit unions.
The Fed showed credit card balances performed better in December than November, but the slightly higher gains could be the result of last year’s late Thanksgiving, which crammed more of the holiday shopping season into December. Twelve-month gains have been generally slowing over the past two years.
In any case, credit unions held $86.1 billion in credit card debt on Dec. 31, up 4.4% from a year earlier. The gain was 2.1% from November, compared with an average November-to-December gain of 2.4% over the previous 10 years.
Credit unions’ share of credit card balances was 6.2% in December, compared with 6.3% in both November 2024 and December 2023.
Banks held $1.3 trillion in credit card debt, up 5.2% from a year earlier. It was up 2.8% from November, slightly better than the 10-year average of 2.7% for November-to-December gains. Banks’ share was 91% in December, up from 90.9% in November 2024 and 90.6% in December 2023.
Contact Jim DuPlessis at [email protected].
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