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Credit unions are focused on providing loans to small businesses, according to NAFCU's second-quarter CU Industry Trends report. However, overall loan growth has weakened considerably since mid-2018.

"Loan growth is slowing across the industry," said NAFCU Chief Economist and Vice President of Research Curt Long. "Some of that is likely the result of weaker demand as the economic expansion ages and as nervousness about the strength of the economy grows. Loan performance is still solid, and credit unions are in a strong capital position."

Credit unions' support of small businesses in their communities was a hot-topic of discussion at NAFCU's Congressional Caucus this week: A number of lawmakers advocated for raising the arbitrary cap on member business lending and a representative from the Small Business Administration discussed the ongoing partnership between the agency, NAFCU, NCUA and individual credit unions.

Other key data from the trends report, sent to member credit unions Thursday:

• ROA has improved mildly in 2019 as a result of improved net interest margins;
• share growth is rising among credit unions with over $500 million in assets;
• Illinois, Nebraska, and Arizona saw the highest member growth; and
• Nevada, Idaho, and Utah saw the highest ROA.

NAFCU's CU Industry Trends is a member-only quarterly report of the latest trends among credit unions; it includes state-level maps highlighting state averages of select performance measures. It is designed to help credit unions identify patterns in industry performance, and to promote comparisons with their own institutions. The report delivers key trends based on NCUA data, both at the industry level and broken down by region, state and asset class.

The NCUA recently released its second-quarter data on the credit union industry, showing that federally insured credit unions' membership exceeded 118 million and assets grew $91 billion over the year.

NAFCU's member-only CU Performance Benchmark and Operating Expense reports, providing credit unions with individualized financial performance and expense analyses based on the most recent call report data, were also sent to credit unions this week and are now available for download.

These reports, composed by NAFCU's award-winning research team, are useful tools for tracking credit unions' progress and comparing it against peer averages. Access more of NAFCU's research products.