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• (e.g. the late great WaMu, Countrywide Financial, and
IndyMac, Belmount Federal S&L) http://www.belmontfederal.com/
• (e.g. Jewett City Savings Bank, CT) http://www.jcsbank.com/index.php
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 Savings institutions have federal or state charters
 Mutual ownership means the institution is owned by its depositors
 Mutual-to-stock conversions are popular
 Characteristics of stock ownership
 Manager/owners have greater potential to benefit
 Opportunity to increase capital
 But more susceptible to unfriendly takeovers
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 Savings banks have characteristics similar to
S&Ls
 Mutual and stock ownership
 State or federal charter
 Key differences between S&Ls and savings banks is that savings banks
 Are concentrated in the northeastern U.S.
 Have traditionally had more diverse asset investments
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Number of Mutual and Stock Savings Banks
WaMu, the largest S&L in 2008, switched from mutual to stock in
1983
Source: FDIC
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Assets of Mutual and Stock Savings Institutions
Source: FDIC
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Real estate loans (mortgages) are the primary asset of savings institutions
But consumer and commercial loans are of increasing
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 Largest source is deposits which include:
 Checking and Passbook savings
 Certificates of deposit
 Consumer
 Jumbo
 Money market accounts
 Usually some borrowed funds
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Regulators assess savings institutions using criteria similar to those used to evaluate commercial banks
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C apital adequacy
A sset composition
M anagement
E arnings
L iquidity
S ensitivity
Regulators conduct on-site examinations
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During the 1980s many S&Ls failed
Reasons for failure
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High interest rates and inflation in late 70s early 80s
Real estate and oil collapse in the Southwest
Regulation (Reg Q) caused disintermediation and liquidity crisis
Deregulation
 Allowed risky investments (junk bonds, etc.)
 Allowed risky loans (especially, commercial real estate)
Moral hazard from raising deposit insurance from $40,000 to $100,000
 Caused careless and poor management (3-6-3 rule)
Fraud (15% of losses) and bad management
Lobbying (politics, senators and representatives)
Failure to close bad banks quickly
Inadequate accounting rules for capital and investments
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 Bailout of savings institutions was financed from several sources including
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Sale of failed S&L assets
Taxpayers
 Cost $153 billion, $124 billion from U.S. taxpayers or about $700 per man/woman/child.
Surviving S&Ls
Easily most expensive financial crisis to that time
Positive impact of the bailout
 Stronger capital positions
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Higher asset quality
More consolidation
Copyright© 2002 Thomson Publishing. All rights reserved.

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Savings institutions have generally performed well after recovering from the
1980s. But in 2008, many failed.
Washington Mutual
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On Sept. 15, WaMu received a credit rating agency downgrade. It’s stock dropped to $2/share, when it had been $45 a year earlier. During the next nine days, the largest bank run in history occurred, with customers pulling $17B out, which was 9% of deposits.
On Sept. 25, 2008, WaMu, the largest S&L, failed with $328B in assets. Chase Bank purchased WaMu on
Sept. 26 for $1.9B, a steal of a deal, resulting in a lawsuit by WaMu’s former shareholders.
WaMu’s strategy was to be the “Wal-Mart of banks” and cater to lower and middle-class customers who other banks viewed as risky. As a result, WaMu invested heavily in subprime mortgages, with teaser rates.
Seattle-based WaMu was chartered the same year as the State of Washington, 1889
Before its collapse, WaMu was the sixth largest “bank” in the U.S. Its failure is the largest of “bank” type institutional failure in U.S. history
Countrywide Financial
 Used an aggressive strategy to approve subprime mortgages. Many of these loans defaulted in 2007. In
January 2008, Countrywide Financial was acquired by Bank of America.
IndyMac (Independent National Mortgage Corp): suffered major losses on its $32 billion portfolio of mortgages and was acquired by OneWest Bank in Feb/10, after IndyMac declared Ch. 7 bankruptcy
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Copyright© 2002 Thomson Publishing. All rights reserved.

 CREDIT UNIONS
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Credit Unions (CUs) are nonprofit, mutual, cooperative organizations, which operate like a club
First CU was in Germany, where old farmers loaned to young ones; first CU in the U.S. was St. Mary’s in NH in 1909.
Members have a common bond, with the followings affiliations:
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80% are employer-based (Boeing, Navy, etc.)
10% are association-based (religion, trade association, trade unions, etc.)
10% are residentially-based (people who live in a certain area)
Some credit unions have a mixture of the above in their common bonds
There are about 6,400 CUs in the U.S. with approximately 105 million members. Most are small, with a few exceptions ( e.g. the Navy FCU, Boeing
FCU, with assets > $1B)
Although there are more CUs than banks, total assets of CUs are less than one tenth the amount in commercial banks
Copyright© 2002 Thomson Publishing. All rights reserved.

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Owned by depositors as a mutual cooperative.
If a credit union were to shut-down, the building/land would be sold and the proceeds sent to depositors
Credit unions do not issue stock, but they have share accounts, with a min. par value (e.g. $25)
Deposits are called shares, and the interest paid is called dividends.
Because they are nonprofits, CU income is exempt from income tax
Like banks, CUs can be either federally or state chartered
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 Satisfy their members
 Offer good interest on share deposits
 Offer loans to members at good rates
 What should happen to the earnings that the
CU accumulates?
 Offer higher rates on deposits
 Offer lower rates on loans
 Give rebates as Christmas presents to owners
 Expand services
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 Advantages of credit unions
 Members/owners are like a family and your name and face is known
(you’re not just a number)
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CUs pay no federal income taxes, which means that banks hate CUs, since they are gov’t subsidized competition)
See http://bankerspank.com
Because CU pay no tax, they should be able to offer better rates
CUs typically charge much lower fees than banks
CUs are exempt from anti-trust laws
CUs have lower operating costs due to volunteers
CUs have a powerful grass-roots lobby and trade associations
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Limited diversification
 Based around one employer, or one region so has concentrated default risk
Limited liquidity
 Cannot attract deposits like banks can, since you have to meet the common bond to open an account
Management Concerns
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Internal controls—separation of duties
Volunteers vs. professionals
Small Entities
 Difficult to attain scale economies
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 CUs obtain most funds through share deposit accounts
 Similar to passbook savings
 Insured up by NCUSIF up to $250,000
 CUs also offer share certificates
 Compete with CDs from commercial banks
 Checking accounts are called share drafts
 Compete with NOW and other bank checking accounts
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If CUs need funds temporarily, they can borrow from other credit unions or from the Central Liquidity
Facility (CLF)
 Acts as a lender for CUs much like the Fed’s discount window for banks
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CLF is an emergency lending fund that is part of a larger internal system called the Corporate Credit Union Network, which is a “credit union for credit unions”
CLF’s or Corporate Credit Unions are in big trouble and have needed capital infusions because they invested in subprime mortgages!
The primary source of capital for CUs is retained earnings
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 CUs use the majority of funds for loans to members
 Automobiles, motorcycles, motorhomes, airplanes
 Home improvements
 Personal expenses
 Some CUs offer mortgages
 CUs also invest in safe securities
 CDs of banks
 U.S. Treasury and Agency bonds
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 Federally-chartered CUs are supervised and regulated by the National Credit Union
Administration (NCUA) www.ncua.gov
.
 NCUA is composed of three board members appointed by the U.S. President
 It grants and revokes Federal charters and examines the financial condition of Federal credit unions
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 State chartered CU are under state supervision
(DFI in Wash.) http://www.dfi.wa.gov/
About 3,900 CUs have fed charters and 2,500 are state chartered
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 Risk assessment
 NCUA examiners compare CU ratios with industry norms to identify problems
 Employ the CAMEL system much like FDIC examiners
 Capital, assets, management, earnings, and liquidity
 Assign each CU into a risk category ranging from Code 1
(low risk) to Code 5 (high risk)
 Less than 10 percent of CUs in Codes 4 or 5
 Alerts examiners to CUs experiencing problems
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The disclosure of the CAMEL score at the credit union of former
NCUA Board nominee Carla Decker has resulted in the ban of a board member there by the NCUA.
The agency on Wednesday said it has banned James Talbert, a former board and supervisory member at the 11,000-member, $46 million District of Columbia Employees Federal Credit Union, from any further participation in the affairs of a federally insured financial institution.
An exam report and CAMEL rating from the credit union was leaked in early November prompting an NCUA investigation.
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SECU Discloses CAMEL Score http://www.cutimes.com/2011/10/12/secu-discloses-camel-score
The CEO at the nation’s second-largest credit union said his institution doesn’t need to hide its CAMEL score and that perhaps others shouldn’t either.
After clearing it with state regulators, the $23 billion State Employees’ Credit Union of
North Carolina announced that it has a CAMEL score of 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the best.
SECU said it sought permission from the N.C. Credit Union Division to disclose its individual CAMEL score, which are confidential, and the 2 score was in its June 30 audit report from state regulators.
It’s all about transparency and reform, says the CEO of the 1.7 million-member institution. “Shining a little sun under the rock never hurt anyone,” Jim Blaine told
Credit Union Times on Thursday. “If a credit union has a problem with its CAMEL rating being revealed, perhaps there’s a deeper problem there, something going on that managers need to address and members need to know about.”
Blaine said that he thought such information should be publicly available on a routine basis, but added, “That’s up to individual credit unions and the regulators to decide.”
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Capital requirements for Federal credit unions
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Federal CUs have capital requirements of 8 percent of risk-weighted assets, 4 percent of primary capital (retained earnings and reserves) and 4 percent of secondary capital
CUs are regulated with respect to the types of services they can offer
 Now able to offer mortgages and can sell mortgages they originate
State-chartered credit unions are regulated by state agencies
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 Insured by the National Credit Union Share
Insurance Fund (NCUSIF) (1970)
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Administered by NCUA
90 percent of CUs are insured by NCUSIF—all
Federal CUs and most state CUs
Credit unions contribute annual insurance premiums of 1/10 of one percent of share deposits
Provides for up to $250k of deposit insurance
CU failure rates have been much lower than for banks and savings institutions, due to better regulation and higher capital
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Liquidity risk (usually more than most banks)
 Localized depositors (not broad source of funds)
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Unanticipated surge of withdrawals can affect a small CU
Short-term solution: borrow from the Central Liquidity
Facility
But CUs cannot borrow from the Federal Reserve
Credit risk (usually more than banks)
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Concentration of loans to local members, many of whom may be employed by same employer, or live in the same geographic area – this means less diversification than banks
But most CU loans are secured by collateral
 Common concern: volunteer employees may not conduct a thorough credit analysis of loan applicants
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 Interest rate risk (usually less than banks)
 More insulated from interest rate risk than banks
 Assets (consumer loan and investment) maturities are typically short term (5 yrs or less), matching the short-term liabilities
 Because of the similarity in maturity in both assets and liabilities, the net interest margin has been fairly stable for CUs
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 CUs have been more profitable in the last two decades due to growth of CU assets and increased efficiency
 CUs have been merging
 More diversified member base
 Achieve economies of scale
 Offer a variety of new products such as traveler's checks, money orders, credit cards, and insurance
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