For many credit unions, a charge-off is a goodbye kiss for payments that will probably never arrive. But the Torrance, Calif.-based Torrance Community Credit Union, which has about $118 million in assets and 7,600 members, recently managed to recover a remarkable 100% of its 2014 credit card charge-offs.

"I've never seen an institution have a 100% recovery rate," CSCU Senior Portfolio Consultant Dean Knudtson said. Knudtson's team works with member credit unions to analyze their credit and debit portfolios, including revenue metrics, marketing, charge-offs, noninterest income and expenses, and other factors.

For credit unions as a whole, of course, charge-offs have become less of a headache. As a percent of average loans, net charge-offs have fallen by about half in the last few years, dropping from 0.91% in 2011 to 0.46% as of September 2015, according to the latest data from the NCUA. And though the dollar amount of loan charge-offs rose by about $110 million to $4.37 billion between December 2014 and September 2015, the rate at which credit unions appear to be recovering charge-offs increased by 5.28% during that time. As of September 2015, credit unions were recovering about $950 million on an annualized basis.