Nebraska's credit unions entered 2015 stronger than ever. From afinancial standpoint, assets and capital are at their highestlevels ever. From a market impact perspective, market share in keyproducts is on the rise. From a member perspective, loan and sharebalances are growing along with the average memberrelationship.

Evident in this performance is Nebraska's robust economicenvironment. A rise in consumer confidence has led to increasedspending allowing Nebraska credit unions to outperform their localand national competitors in a variety of measures such as loangrowth.

Consumer lending continues to be at the core of Nebraska'scredit union activity. Credit unions granted more than $663.5million in consumer loans during the first three quarters of 2014,up $70.3 million from the same period a year ago.

Nebraska credit unions posted higher year over year loan growthin every category, but the majority of the increase came in autooriginations.

New and used auto loans grew 10.7% and 9.8%, respectively. Inaggregate, Nebraska credit unions' overall auto loan portfolioincreased $113.7 million, up 10.1% over the same period last year.Nebraska credit unions hold 47.4% of their loan portfolios inautos, compared to just 31.9% nationally.

Credit cards, while just 2.8% of the loan portfolio, gained7.7%, to hit $72.3 million as consumer spending by Nebraskanscontinued to increase. The total loan portfolio at Nebraska creditunions expanded 8.9% annually to $2.6 billion. This loan growth isnearly double that of national banks.

With loan growth outpacing share growth by more than sixpercentage points, Nebraska credit unions' loan-to-share ratiocontinues to rise. The ratio increased 4.5 percentage points to80.7%, eclipsing the national average of 74%.

Year-over-year loan growth is also a contributing factor to therise in net income at Nebraska's credit unions. Net income rose24.1% significantly higher than the 8.7% growth posted by creditunions nationwide.

Rising interest rates and a growing loan portfolio has resultedin expanding margins at credit unions. Nebraska credit unionsrealized a net interest margin of 3.09%, up four basis points froma year ago and 24 basis points higher than the national average of2.85%. Net interest margins in the state have consistently trendedhigher than the national average since the early 2000s.

Nebraska credit unions are extremely proud of the numbers andstrong readings they have been able to post during the past year,but success isn't always measured solely by statistics. Theycontinue to thrive in large part due to their willingness andability to listen and respond to their members' needs and wants, atestament to the advantage and value of the cooperative model.

J. Scott Sullivan is president/CEO of the Nebraska CreditUnion League. He can be reached at 1-800-950-4455or [email protected].