Released: September 25, 2008

The crisis and your pocketbook

Source: Ylan Q. Mui, Washington Post (Free Registration)

Here we address readers’ questions about the financial crisis. To submit a question, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/yourmoney

Q.What is the impact of the government’s financial rescue plan on credit unions?

A. The impact on credit unions seems quite minimal. These nonprofit cooperatives do not hold many of the investments that are poisoning other financial institutions, so they have weathered the crisis fairly well.

Credit unions have kept about 70 percent of their mortgage loans on the books, meaning that they did not sell them off to other institutions, according to the Credit Union National Association. The group said that less than 1 percent of credit union mortgages were in delinquency at the end of the first quarter. Delinquencies on other loans have edged up to 1 percent.

“If they’ve got their money in a federally insured credit union, they’re just hunky dory,” CUNA spokesman Patrick Keefe said. 

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