Since the industry's consolidation began decades ago, credit union professionals have forever argued whether mergers are good or bad for the movement.

A recently released white paper from a team of third-year students at the Southeast CUNA Management School program that weighs both sides of this salient issue contains new and perhaps groundbreaking industry research that answers what may be the most important question about consolidations: Whether mergers fulfill the original mission of the movement of adding value and improving the financial lives of credit union members.

"As we began to explore the existing data for this project, however, we noticed that there was a sizeable gap in the research that had been done regarding mergers and consolidations within the credit union industry," the authors wrote. "While there were plenty of articles and op-ed pieces that levied opinions about the merger trend, there was very little quantitative data related to how these mergers affected the member experience."