The future of credit unions in the United States: evidence from quantitative extrapolations

Abstract

Credit Unions (CUs) are financial co-operatives owned and controlled by their members; in the United States they operate both on state as well as on a national level and are in direct competition with retail high-street banks. In this study we use published data for six key financial figures from ten states in the US and present short to mid-term extrapolations. An Expert Forecasting Support System, selecting via a competition among classic extrapolative techniques, has been employed in order to prepare one-year as well as five-years ahead forecasts. The results surface significant statistical evidence of: (a) merging across CUs, and (b) blooming of all key financial figures. †An earlier version of this paper was presented in MIC'06 – Management International Conference 2006, 23–25 November 2006, Portoro[zbreve], Slovenia.