Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Credit Union association lowers estimate on number of new customers

The Credit Union National Association has drastically lowered its estimates for how many new members it gained in October, shrinking the number it had trumpted as the anti-bank backlash and Bank Transfer Day movement spread across the country.

In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 5 social-media driven Bank Transfer Day, the association initially reported gaining 650,000 new members and $4.5 billion in new deposits.

But after a more scientific sampling of credit union data, the association revised the estimates. Now the figure for October is cited as 214,000. In September and October combined, CUNA now estimates 441,000 new members.

It's still significant. The September and October number represents about 75 percent of the growth in all of last year.

CUNA also reports 400,000 new checking accounts in October from existing members. Adding that number to the new member total gets the number close to the 650,000 figure in the intial survey.

The association says that the survey was intended to "provide a rapid response" and believes misinterpretation of the survey question led credit unions to include new checking account numbers as well.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL. 214K new members! Whoa. I'm sure the big banks were really feeling those losses

John said...

Basically, they did the same thing the administration does with economic and jobs figures... start with a wildly optimistic number which you know that EVERYONE will broadcast far and wide and then come back later with "adjusted" figures which will be much lower than originally stated but which will likely be buried way back in the news and few will ever hear of it!