Consider the two following pieces of news that crossed my deskyesterday:

1. The December 2012 ACSI Customer Satisfaction scores for financialservices revealed that credit unions scored higher than banks (as awhole) for the fifth straight year. However, credit unions' scoredropped from 87 to 82, a 6% drop, from the previous year. Thiscomes was after a seven point gain in 2011 over the 2010score.
2. NerdWallet analyzed data published by theNCUA and found that half of all federally insured credit unionsexperienced an increase in membership from June 2011 to June 2012.According to the NCUA, credit union membership ranks grew by 2.1million from October 2011 through September 2011.

My take: This raises some interestingquestions. What caused the drop in credit unions' satisfactionratings in 2012? And, for that matter, what caused the huge jump in2011? Why would membership ranks continue to grow in the faceof declining satisfaction? Would membership have grown even fasterif satisfaction levels had remained at its 2011 level?

I can come up with two competing schools of thought to explainwhat's going on:ReadRon Shevlin's complete article.