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Strategic Budgeting/Forecasting Questions: Establish Appropriate Measures of Success

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The fourth entry in our 6 blog series about Strategic Budgeting/Forecasting Questions addresses measures of success, and how they should connect to the budget or forecast.

Question 4 – Are our financial measures of success handcuffing the credit union strategically?

There are many examples of appropriate and inappropriate measures of success as they relate to the budget and strategy. Some measures even come with unintended consequences. Measures should reflect, as closely as possible, what the credit union is really trying to accomplish, such as more engaged members or a profitable structure. Sometimes, measures that have existed in that past are kept as a matter of habit and simply aren’t updated in accordance with the plan.

Let’s assume that a credit union has a strategy to target members in their mid 20s to 30s to serve as a pipeline for the future. Beyond ROA and net worth, here are examples of some common measures of success:

  • Low delinquency: Choosing to target younger members is likely to come with more credit risk, so a measure of success that keeps delinquency at the same or lower levels may be in conflict with the plan. Not all younger members have higher credit risk, but focusing on low delinquency could lead the credit union to say no to the very members it is trying to attract, damaging its reputation with this group who likes to share their experiences. Setting this measure to realistic levels at the outset also helps stakeholders be more comfortable when higher delinquencies appear. It may be reasonable, in this situation, to budget a higher PLL
  • Products per member (PPM) or products per household (PPH): A strategy that aims to bring in new members is likely to reduce PPM and PPH. New members tend to have fewer products early on. An organization that is trying to increase PPM and PPH will be intent on getting existing members to do more business with the credit union, which could create little motivation to capture the target group. Consider measuring new members or households separately if measuring PPM or PPH
  • Member satisfaction/Net Promoter Score (NPS): A credit union that is successful in attracting younger members could find their overall member satisfaction or NPS dropping. Many credit unions find that, after segmenting by age, scores for younger members are much lower than for older members. Telling the organization to improve member satisfaction or NPS could work against the strategy to attract younger members. Consider measuring score trends segmented by age
  • Asset growth: Younger members usually don’t bring a lot of deposit dollars and deposit growth usually drives asset growth. If the asset growth measure requires special effort to be successful, those efforts will reasonably be focused on older members, pushing the target group to a lower priority
  • Loan growth: Similar to asset growth, younger people usually don’t bring a lot of loans to the credit union. Loan dollars borrowed per member is usually heaviest for people in their 50s. A push for loan growth will also push the target group to a lower priority

Other considerations to keep in mind when setting measures of success:

  • Member growth: When measuring the number of new members, remember that it’s easy to grow $5 member accounts, so consider whether that’s really success when setting measures for this strategy
  • Member growth and indirect lending: Growth in indirect lending could increase membership in the target group, but is that a good thing? Indirect members often have a single product (an indirect loan) and it is commonly acknowledged that it is difficult to convert those members to “real” members who use other credit union products. Including these members in member growth measures could show an uptick while failing the strategy of filling the pipeline. Consider measuring members that come from the indirect lending channel separately from direct members
  • Member growth and PPM/PPH loopholes: By not purging inactive members, growth will look better. At the same time, purging inactive members can make PPM and PPH increase without accomplishing anything. Consider adding caveats to measures that can be easily improved without actually getting any closer to the strategy
  • Member engagement: Don’t just focus on products when evaluating engagement; consider services, especially those from other areas of the credit union, such as insurance or wealth management

Assuming the budget reflects the strategic initiatives, which we discussed in the second blog in this series, stakeholders should view the measures of success through the lens of the budget. If it’s not clear how the budget leads to the measures, or if the measures are in conflict with the budget or the strategy, stakeholders should be asking questions. The goal is for everyone to emerge from the budgeting and strategic planning processes with a realistic view of what success looks like.

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PLL and Managing Expectations

The most recent 2012 NCUA data shows that year-to-date, about 29% of all credit unions have run either a zero or negative provision for loan loss, due primarily to overfunding of the allowance.  The bulk of these credit unions were smaller in terms of asset size. Filtering to credit unions with assets over $500M, the answer is 5%.  Knowing that, it might be easy to infer that the abnormally low provision for loan loss is a small credit union phenomenon, but that is not necessarily the case. While the smaller institutions may have seen the more extreme swings in provision, recent data also shows that about 53% of credit unions over $500M have benefited from a provision for loan loss below 30bps (remember that in the exuberance prior to the credit crisis, PLL averaged 30-35bps).

The drop in PLL expense has helped offset the squeeze in margin that many credit unions are experiencing.  This leads to the question:  Can such a low level of expense be sustained in the future? Looking forward, credit expenses are likely to go back up as many institutions have delinquency and charge-off ratios that materially exceed provision for loan loss.  Managing board expectations in this regard is important.  Boards need to understand the impact of allowance overfunding and how it influences net income.  One simple step to address this would be to compare end-of-year provision for loan loss to actual charge offs.  Another option that could provide more detailed information would be to take your current level of charge offs and run out your budget with charge offs in place of provision for loan loss.  These analyses would help a credit union’s management and board to get a better feel for the sustainability of earnings once the ALL is no longer overfunded and PLL starts to rise.

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Net Interest Margin and Risk Limits

A/LM measurement systems, policies and defined risk limits are intended to help ensure that credit unions do not take unacceptable risks relative to their insurance—which is net worth. While this sounds straightforward, much depends on the measurement system and policies in place.

Consider the example of a credit union that uses net interest income (NII) to manage risk and has established NII limits in policy. These types of limits are typically based on a percent volatility compared to today’s NII (click here for a related c. notes article on this topic).  By taking more credit risk, the credit union could improve their NII today—as a result of higher asset yields—thus reducing their volatility and, in some cases, putting them back within policy limits.

However, NII misses an important piece of the risk puzzle—the impact of increasing credit risk.  Recall that NII ignores any losses due to increasing credit risk since it is calculated before dealing with net operating expenses.  As a result, the credit union could be within its volatility limits yet unintentionally increase risks to net worth to unacceptable levels when accounting for credit risk.

Ultimately, the risk management process should help decision-makers understand threats to bottom-line earnings and most importantly, net worth.  Therefore, taking a comprehensive approach to taking, managing and aggregating risk is essential. This comprehensive approach should include all strategy levers—yield on assets, cost of funds, operating expense, PLL and non-interest income.

This approach also ties to the NCUA IRR Rule, which stated that “net worth is the reserve of funds available to absorb the risks of a credit union, and it is therefore the best measure against which to gauge the credit union’s risk exposure.”

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c. notes Excerpt: Thriving In A World of Shrinking Margins

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As interest rates have been at historic lows for a prolonged period of time, credit unions have had the benefit of lowering their cost of funds (COF) as loan and investment yields decline.  Many seem to have worked through their credit issues and, at least for now, have been able to reduce their provision for loan losses (PLL)—another counter-balance to declining asset yields.

Unfortunately, for many, the COF and PLL have—or will soon—hit a floor while asset yields continue to decline.  Some have turned to longer-term assets, such as mortgages, mortgage investments and callable bonds to help current earnings. However, these options add interest rate risk in a rising rate environment.

To read the full article, please see our c. notes page, available here.

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Setting Board Expectations

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Setting board expectations has always been key.  However, it is increasingly important as many credit unions are seeing their ROA jump—largely due to falling provision ratios.  Over the last two years, the industry average PLL has declined from its peak of just over 1% in 2009 to about 0.50% as of the first quarter in 2011 (see graph A below, Source NCUA, FDIC).  The decrease in PLL has been the single biggest reason that the industry average ROA has increased since its low in 2009 (see graph B).

While this has been great for the industry, the question is, how sustainable is the decline in PLL? In many cases, the decline is not sustainable as credit unions are running a provision that is below “normal” levels or reversing accruals to ALLL that they believe to be excessive (see post Planning for PLL).  This means the current ROA is temporary, as it will decrease once the provision returns to normal levels.

Management teams need to communicate this to their board and set the expectation that their financial position will be different going forward.  This will help prevent misunderstanding between the board and management and ensure that the two groups continue to work together to position their institution to be stronger in the future.

Table A:


Table B: