Credit unions today are constantly striving to improve their member service, whether it’s through new savings options, competitive loan rates or a wider variety of services. To help gauge the credit union movement’s constant progress, Callahan & Associates created the Return of the Member (ROM) Index. The analysis, consisting of sixteen various ratios is updated quarterly for every credit union in the country.
The Return of the Member calculation considers the three core credit union functions of lending, saving, and product usage with three main components: Return to the Savers, Return to the Borrowers, and Member Service Usage. The ranking system is an index calculation that takes into account a credit union’s performance in comparison with its asset-based peer group.
At year-end 2003, Pentagon FCU, PACE CU, and Burbank City Employees all placed #1 in their respective asset peer groups in the Return of the Member Index.
Below are the top five credit unions for each of the top three asset peer groups, based on Return of the Member score. Please note that the ROM index is just a tool for performance analysis. It is not a measure of a credit union’s safety and soundness, but an indicator of how effectively a credit union is providing member service.