US Credit Unions

: mergers and failures

Abstract

Credit Unions are not-for-profit financial cooperatives that exist to realize the economic and social goals of the people who make up their members. In the US, Credit Unions have been a major success story. In recent times there has, however, been a significant decline in Credit Union numbers and this thesis explores the determinants and effects of mergers and failures for US Credit Unions from 1994 to 2020.

The focus of Chapter 2 is the identification of merger and failure determinants. The methodological approach used is based upon hazard functions with the period of investigation January 1994 to June 2019. This chapter also explores whether members of acquiring and acquired Credit Unions benefit from mergers, with this analysis suggesting that the majority of benefits are captured by the members of the acquired Credit Unions. This Chapter also establishes the factors likely to produce a successful merger with success defined as members benefiting through better savings and loan rates.

In Chapter 3, we develop an interpretable machine-learning approach, based on Random Forest (RF), to predict (one year in advance) Credit Unions that were liquidated by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) between December 2001 and September 2020, with the decision- making process also explored. We also rework the model to predict (one year in advance) US Credit Unions that we label as Assumed Failed.

In Chapter 4, we develop a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) based machine-learning approach in combination with the event study methodology proposed by Bauer (2008), to investigate how mergers affect the benefits of three stakeholder groups: members of the acquired Credit Unions, members of the acquiring Credit Unions and the regulator (the NCUA). The analysis also highlights that acquisition experience enables the merged entity to improve both lending capabilities and earnings capabilities thus creating a more stable financial institution.

Thesis embargoed until 31 July 2024.

Date of Award	Jul 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	Donal McKillop (Supervisor)