Field of membership expansions during 2022 Q1

Each quarter, the National Credit Union Administration’s (NCUA) Office of Credit Union Resources and Expansion publishes data on changes in federal credit unions’ (FCU) fields of membership (FOM), whether via expansion, conversion, or merger. The Merger Activity and Insurance Report includes both a broad industry overview and detailed data on individual credit unions, which often reveals the outsized role of a few institutions.

As the NCUA notes in its Quarterly Data Summary Report, these 2022 first quarter expansions helped to lift the total number of actual members of federally insured credit unions in the US to 131 million, an increase of 5.3 million from March 2021 and of 1.4 million from December 2021.

Background

At the federal level, fields of membership (often also called charters) may be classified as (1) community, or residentially-based, charters; (2) single common bond charters (SCBs), either occupational or associational; or (3) multiple common bond charters (MCBs), which may combine either or both occupational and associational common bonds.

 

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