Last Thursday and Friday, Callahan’s held its Quarterly Credit Union Trendwatch Call with Chip Filson leading a discussion on the latest topics in the credit union industry. Part of the discussion was centered on dealing with the recent large share inflows and managing a growing investment portfolio.
Mike Lord, CFO of State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina ($10.4B) talked about how his credit union has handled an 8% drop in their loan/share ratio, which has been the main factor in a 60% growth in investments which have reached $3.1 billion.
Over the past year, SECU has taken a Safety-Liquidity-Yield investment approach, focusing first on safety, second on liquidity, and lastly taking a look at yield. As a part of their ongoing plan, they gravitated from agencies to corporate deposits which actually pay a slightly higher yield. With more investments than all but the largest corporates, SECU, in order to avoid flooding any individual corporate with shares, is now a member of nine corporate credit unions and will probably join a few more.