Across the 216 credit unions sharing account-level AIRES data with CUCollaborate, the average loan carries an interest rate 1.92 percentage points below its market benchmark. On $55.7 billion in loan balances, that is $1.05 billion returned to members in a year. Deposits add another $680.9 million.
Those are good numbers. The average is also the least useful number in the file.
Luis G. Dopico, PhD, CUCollaborate's Partner and Chief Economist, opened our monthly webinar series on October 21 with the macroeconomic picture and closed it with account-level data. The data shows that the benefit your credit union delivers is concentrated in particular products, particular credit tiers, and particular account sizes. Most credit unions have never seen their own distribution.
The margin you are working with
The rate cycle has not reversed so much as settled. Fed funds sat at 3.88% in October 2026, down from a 5.33% peak. The 30-year mortgage was 7.46%, 10-year Treasurys 5.05%. Overall CPI was 3.7% year over year and core CPI 2.6%, so the inflation rate has fallen while prices have not.
Credit union margins look healthier than they did three years ago. Interest income reached 5.11% of assets in 2026 Q2, up from 3.02% in 2022. Interest expense rose from 0.08% to 1.68% over the same period. Net interest income was 3.43% of assets, noninterest income 1.11%, and ROA 0.90%. Net worth stood at 11.53% of assets.
Growth and credit both look normal. Deposits grew 5.2% and loans 4.9% in the year to 2026 Q2. Loans were 69.7% of assets. Delinquency at 60 or more days was 0.96% of loans, down from 1.03% at the end of 2025, with credit cards at 1.91%.
The call report tells you the average, not who
Industry averages hide how far apart credit unions now sit. Among the 474 credit unions over $1 billion in assets, 42% paid between 0.25% and 0.50% of assets in interest expense in 2022. By 2026 Q1, 19% were paying between 1.75% and 2.00%, 13% between 2.00% and 2.25%, and 11% more than 2.25%. Interest income clustered much more tightly: two thirds of those credit unions earned between 4.5% and 5.5% of assets.
Asset growth has spread out the same way. In the year to 2026 Q1, 12% of large credit unions shrank while 8% grew more than 15%.
Those are still credit union averages. Member benefit does not happen at the credit union level. It happens one loan and one share account at a time, and the only file that carries that detail is the AIRES file your examiner already asks for.
Loan benefits fall as credit scores rise
CUCollaborate calculates member benefit as the difference between what a member pays your credit union and what the same member would have paid in the market for the same loan. Run across every loan in the data collaborative, the pattern is steep.
A member at 600 gets five percentage points off the market rate. A member at 830 gets less than half a point. Members in the Fair II tier hold 7.1% of balances and receive 11.1% of the benefit. Members in the two Exceptional tiers hold 17.8% of balances and receive 7.8%.
The product view runs the same direction. Credit cards return 9.62 points against their benchmark and payday alternative loans return 435.50 points, which is what competing with a payday lender looks like in a table. First mortgages and used autos carry the dollars: $361.4 million and $327.2 million, together 65% of all loan benefit in the collaborative.
Two products run negative. New auto loans price 0.13 points above benchmark and private student loans 1.45 points above. Members in those products would have done better somewhere else.
On deposits, the benefit goes to the largest accounts
Deposits work the opposite way, and the concentration is sharper. Collaborative credit unions pay 0.78 percentage points above the market benchmark across $86.8 billion in balances, worth $680.9 million to members.
Accounts over $100,000 are 1.5% of all accounts and 45.3% of balances. They receive 66.9% of the deposit benefit. Accounts under $1,000 are 68% of all accounts and 1.2% of balances. Their benefit is negative: those members would have earned slightly more elsewhere.
The pricing behind that is visible in the file. Regular shares pay 0.19% on balances under $1,000 and 0.98% on balances over $100,000. Share certificates deliver 52.5% of all deposit benefit and money market accounts another 33.4%. Share drafts hold 23.1% of balances and produce 2.6% of the benefit.
None of that is unusual. Every depository prices by size and by product. The question is whether your credit union chose that distribution or inherited it.
Where your credit union likely sits
Benefit varies as much between credit unions as it does between members. On loans, 41.7% of collaborative credit unions deliver between 1 and 2 percentage points of benefit and 30.9% deliver between 2 and 3. Another 12.6% deliver less than 1 point, and 1.3% deliver none at all. At the other end, 3.6% deliver more than 5 points.
On deposits, 39.0% deliver between 0.5 and 1 point and 34.5% deliver between 0 and 0.5. Roughly one credit union in ten pays below market on deposits overall.
If you do not know which band you are in, that is the first thing worth finding out.
What your credit union should do now
- Measure benefit by credit score tier, not just by product. A portfolio average of 1.92 points can hold a 13-point benefit for one member and a negative one for another.
- Find the products where your differential runs negative. New auto and private student loans are the two that run negative across the collaborative, and they are usually priced that way by default rather than by decision.
- Break deposit benefit out by account size. If two thirds of it lands in 1.5% of accounts, decide whether that matches what your board says the credit union is for.
- Compare against other credit unions rather than against your own prior year. Your 2026 numbers moved because rates moved. Peer position is the part you control.
How CUCollaborate can help
We compute risk-based member benefits from the AIRES files credit unions already produce for examinations. The collaborative has grown from 69 credit unions, 2.5 million members, and $35 billion in deposits in August 2023 to 216 credit unions, 11.8 million members, and $172 billion in deposits in September 2026. Every participating credit union sees its own benefit by loan type, credit tier, deposit type, and account size, measured against the market and against peers.
Send us your most recent AIRES file and we will show you your own version of these tables in 30 minutes. The next session in the series is Monday, November 16 at 1:00 PM ET. Save your spot.
