N.C. Credit Unions Ease Small Business Lending Cap

Small-business lending is not a large part of the credit union industry, which has focused on consumer services like debit cards and car loans.  Collectively, credit unions hold about $40 billion in business loans – less than 6 percent of all small-business loans, according to the Credit Union National Association.  But the total is growing. In the last four years, as banks have largely shrunk their balance sheets, credit union business lending has grown more than 44 percent, said Dan Schline, the N.C. Credit Union League’s senior vice president of association services.  Credit unions say they’re not stealing business from the community banks, but instead underwriting loans that banks turned down.  “We are getting business that the banks aren’t eager to get,” said Joe Mecca, spokesman for Coastal Federal Credit Union, a $2 billion credit union based in Raleigh that lends around the state.  It has about $200 million in small-business loans on its books, and would be over the cap if it closed on all the loans in its pipeline, Mecca said.