Orange County’s credit unions built assets at a faster clip over the past year, when the biggest of the group pulled most of the gains.
This week’s Special Report includes a list of 29 credit unions with headquarters in OC ranked by total assets as of June 30.
The member-owned institutions combined for $16.9 billion in assets, a year-over-year increase of 4.7% compared with last year’s growth rate of about 2%.
More than half—17—had asset decreases, which were more than offset by gains at 12 credit unions.
The list paints a mixed picture of the local credit unions’ condition. The group, while notching asset gains, had weaker profitability as they combined for $73.9 million in net income for the first half of 2014, down about 12% year-over-year.
The number of OC employees also declined by nearly 4% to 2,384, and the number of OC members fell by less than 1% to 865,031.
• SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union in Santa Ana, the biggest of the pack, led the overall growth in assets. It had $10.4 billion, or about 62% of the entries’ assets—up 6.5% year-over-year, or by more than $637 million. The increase accounted for about 84% of the list’s overall asset growth; without its gains, the combined growth rate would have been 2% instead of 4.7%.
SchoolsFirst, which serves employees and retirees of the education industry in Southern California, had about $51 million in profit for the first six months of the year, down 11% from the same period last year. It has an estimated 1,200 employees in OC and an estimated 536,000 members.
• Huntington-beach NuVision Federal Credit Union stayed at No. 2 with $1.3 billion in assets, up 6%. It had $5.7 million in profit, up 12% year-over-year. NuVision serves employees and family members of select companies, such as Boeing and Tesoro, as well as residents of Leisure World, a retirement community in Seal Beach.
Vice President LJ Tarman said the asset increase was due primarily to a merger with Los Angeles-based Pacific Resource Credit Union that took effect in July 2013.
She said many members have been taking advantage of low interest rates to refinance their mortgages and more recently to make purchases.
“The economy is improving. You can see it in the ways that people are more open to buying new cars, to buying new homes,” she said. “A big part of what you see in these mortgage numbers is the purchase markets. People have been refinancing because rates are low, but now people are actually buying homes. Especially in Orange County, real estate is a huge industry, and it’s good to see that coming back.”
NuVision employs 214 locally, down about 6% over the year. It has 28,309 members in OC, down from an estimated 35,000 a year earlier. The decrease was due to “a change in software and how things are counted,” Tarman said. “Last year, the software was counting members in terms of the radius from the branches. So it was counting parts of different counties.” Now it counts only those in Orange County.
• Santa Ana-based Orange County’s Credit Union moved up one spot to No. 3 with a 6% increase in assets to $1.2 billion. It notched $6.6 million in profit for the first half of the year, up 5%. The credit union has 270 employees here, down by 3%, and nearly 90,000 members, up about 4%.
• Santa Ana Federal Credit Union had the largest percentage increase in membership. It added about 2,260 members, a 32% increase to 9,200. Santa Ana Federal kept its place at No. 14 with $62.5 million in assets, up 3% year-over-year. It had six-month net income of $51,808, down from $88,040 a year earlier.
A handful of credit unions fell off the list this year as a result of combinations with other institutions.
CarePoint Federal Credit Union in Orange combined last November with Downey-based Financial Partners Credit Union; Lutheran Credit Union of America in Brea combined with America’s Christian Credit Union in Glendora last October; and Firestone Financial Services Credit Union in Anaheim became part of Brea-based Credit Union of Southern California in a combination in August 2013. Credit Union of Southern California ranks No. 5 on the list, with $781.8 million in assets after an 8% increase, the largest percentage growth in the group.
• California Agribusiness Credit Union moved up three spots to No. 19 despite a nearly 4% decrease in assets to $27.1 million. The Buena Park-based credit union had a net loss of $1,224 for the first half of the year, versus its year-earlier loss of $17,700.
• No. 25, Southland Savings Federal Credit Union, also based in Buena Park, moved up four spots to No. 25 with $7.7 million in assets.
The institution serves about 950 members affiliated with select employer groups, including Oakley Inc., Nutrilite and stores in the Buena Park Mall. It swung to a profit in the first six months of the year, notching $10,016 in net income, up from a loss of $11,823 in the same period last year.
