ALEXANDRIA, Va.–The National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund reported net income of $50.5 million during the fourth quarter, bringing total income to $169.7 million for 2019.
But the fund’s equity ratio finished 2019 with an equity ratio of 1.35%, below the normal operating level of 1.38%, meaning credit unions will not be seeing any dividend on their 1% deposit in the NCUSIF this year.
Overall, at year-end 2019 the NCUSIF had total assets of $16.7 billion, 95% of which is held in U.S. Treasuries and cash.
Total balances of all FICUs is up $640.2 million in 2019, NCUA said. Overall, the NCUSIF’s total liabilities and net position is up nearly $900 million from year-end 2018.
Other NCUSIF data shared by agency staff during the NCUA board included:
- The fund has a 2.9 years average life of investments. The weighted average yield is 1.88%.
- Agency staff said the primary driver of the change in the equity ratio is faster growth in insured shares of 7.43% as compared to the sum of the contributed capital and retained earnings less contingent liabilities, which increased by 4.08%.
- The total number of CAMEL Code 4/5 credit unions was down by 10 in the fourth quarter to 190, representing 0.79% of all insured shares. Three of those credit unions have more than $500 million in assets. Most of the CAMEL Code 4/5 CUs have between $10 million and $100 million in assets.
- The number of CAMEL Code 3 credit unions was down by 23 during Q4 to 838. Those CUs represent 2.94% of insured shares ($36 billion in insured shares). The largest number of CAMEL Code 3 credit unions, 413, had less than $10 million in assets, representing a total of $1.3 billion in insured shares, NCUA said.
- In 2019, there were two CU failures that hit the NCUSIF at a cost of $40.3 million (nearly all of which was due to the failure of C B S Employees FCU in California). But 2019’s losses were significantly below those of 2018, when there were eight failures in 2018 at a cost of $792.5 million (nearly all of which was represented by taxi medallion credit unions).