Signals · Q3 2026QuarterCall Research · November 3, 2026
Delinquency and reserve building both exceeded Q3 2025's pace, and one credit union accounts for each
Among the credit unions that filed for every quarter since Q2 2025, delinquency rose a little faster in Q3 2026 than in Q3 2025 and provisions ran further ahead of charge-offs, but one credit union accounts for each difference, and without it each move was smaller than in Q3 2025. Loans outgrew shares as borrowings rose for a second quarter, and return on assets fell below Q3 2025's in every size band, so all four signals continue to the year-end tests and none is settled.
60+ day delinquency, all federally insured credit unions
Share of loans 60 or more days past due, at quarter end
Source: NCUA Call Report · QuarterCall
Second-quarter readings
What the next quarter showed
Every Signals edition sets tests for the next, and the next one says how they came out, including the ones we missed.
MetA first-quarter delinquency low above last year’s would mark a structural ratchet.Q1 2026’s low, 0.85%, came in above Q1 2025’s 0.80%.Set in System Signals — Q4 2025 · settled in System Signals — Q1 2026
MetLoan growth would pick up in the second quarter.1.96%, the strongest quarter since Q2 2023, though most of it is real estate.Set in System Signals — Q1 2026 · settled in System Signals — Q2 2026
Not metThe smallest credit unions’ earnings would turn.Q3 2026 alone returned 71 basis points annualized, below Q2 2026’s 80 and Q3 2025’s 95, and the nine months fell short of 2025’s too.Set in System Signals — Q1 2026 · settled in The Cohort Earnings Divergence — Q3 2026
Not metA faster fall in the charter count would confirm a squeeze on small institutions.155 fewer credit unions than a year ago, against 161 at Q1: a steady pace, not a faster one.Set in System Signals — Q1 2026 · settled in System Signals — Q2 2026
MissedWe expected to restore the CCPI and the CUFSI in Q2.Neither is restored: the composite build cannot yet be reproduced from the release.Set in System Signals — Q1 2026 · settled in System Signals — Q2 2026
What we're watching in Q4 2026
The Q4 2026 Signals will revisit each item on this list and say whether it continued, escalated, moderated or was dropped.
Each edition picks up the questions the last one left open, so a finding is never read alone. A thread shows the reports that carried it and the test it faces next.
SignalsBreakdownsOther
The delinquency ratchet
8 editions since June 2025
Each first-quarter low since 2022 has sat above the one before, and the Q4 2025 report’s test for a ratchet was met in Q1 2026. From June to September 2026 the panel’s delinquency ratio rose 4.3 basis points, against 4.0 over the same months of 2025, so we read the ratchet as continuing at the 2025 pace and not faster. Little of the year’s increase is in cards or vehicles.
Next test: The second-half climb. Delinquency rose 12 bps from June to December last year; a repeat ends 2026 above 1.03%.
The provision lag
7 editions since March 2026
Delinquency crossed 1% in Q4 2025 while charge-offs and provisioning stayed flat. In Q3 2026 provisions were 128.2% of net charge-offs, against 118.0% a year earlier, but one credit union accounts for more than the whole of that rise; among the rest we read the lag as unchanged, and the allowance fell to 134.0% of delinquent loans from 140.5%.
Next test: The reserve build. Provisions exceeded charge-offs by $925M in Q3 2026 against $540M a year earlier; a fourth quarter below charge-offs would undo part of it.
The funding gap
7 editions since September 2025
Loans outgrew shares in Q3 2026 for a second quarter, and over the year to September by 7.62% against 6.77%, the reverse of the order the Q2 2026 edition read as seasonal. Cash, investments and borrowings met the difference. Signals no longer reads the gap as only seasonal; the Breakdown reads the quarter as weighing on that reading without overturning it, since ten credit unions’ rises equal seven-tenths of the net rise in borrowings.
Next test: Borrowings. They rose 6.16% in Q3 2026 after 5.05% in Q2; a third consecutive rise in Q4 2026 would meet the test.
The size divide
8 editions since December 2025
Through September the three middle asset bands earned more for the nine months than a year earlier, the largest about the same and the smallest less. Credit unions under $100M, 2,407 of the panel’s members with 2.9% of its assets, returned 72 basis points annualized against 85, and Q3 2026 alone was below Q3 2025 as well. The Breakdown reads the shortfall as the band’s rather than one quarter’s or a few credit unions’: each quarter of 2026 fell short of its 2025 quarter, and most of the band earned less.
