Credit unions across the land have learned to live with therazor-thin margin between savings and lending rates by nurturingsources of noninterest income. Sure, everyone in credit union landknows that.

But did you know that it's not all fee income? Not even close.In fact, fee income as a percentage of average assets has basicallyheld steady for more than 15 years. It was 0.64% among all U.S.credit unions in 1999, spiked to 0.88% during the recession in 2008and settled back to 0.66% in 2015.

However, other operating income was only 0.26% of average assetsas the new millennium dawned. It's grown steadily to 0.69% lastyear, according to our analysis here at Callahan &Associates.