Journal Article

Credit union failures and insurance fund losses: 1971-2004

Abstract: Over the past few decades, assets in the credit union industry have grown considerably and have grown relative to banking. As with banking, the credit union industry has experienced considerable structural change that, in part, involved failures. While the data on failures in the banking industry have been analyzed at length, the same has not been true for credit unions, so far. ; This Economic Letter presents newly produced data on losses in the federal insurance program for credit union shares and on the rates at which federally insured credit unions (FICUs) failed. (Shares in credit unions are analogous to deposits in banks.) We compare these data to data for institutions insured by the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). We also briefly review the macroeconomic and microeconomic factors that likely contributed to credit union failures and the losses they entailed.

Keywords: Credit unions; Risk;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Part of Series: FRBSF Economic Letter

Publication Date: 2005

Order Number: 20