Numerica Credit Union, of Spokane, says it more than doubled its earnings in 2010 compared with the year earlier, with increases in its deposits, loans, and assets.

The credit union reported 2010 net income of $11.3 million, a 249 percent increase from the $3.2 million it posted in 2009. Numerica Chief Financial Officer Cindy Leaver says that jump in earnings partly was because in 2009 the credit union experienced more than $2 million in write-downs related to corporate credit union woes and because it had fewer loan losses in 2010 compared with the year before.

"We definitely saw loan growth in 2010, but it was still a tough year for loans for us," Leaver says. "But relative to other credit unions, we did pretty well. We had about 5 percent growth in that area."

Numerica's loans totaled $732.8 million at the end of 2010, compared with about $698 million a year earlier.

She adds that one reason Numerica's loan numbers didn't increase as much in 2010 as in the previous year, is because its dealer center that offers car, RV, boat, and other loans captured less of the loan market share last year. She says that many local auto dealers began extending more of their own loans again last year, in a shift from 2009.

Yet, she says, Numerica was still able to increase its loan totals over the past year because it made more business loans, which made up for some of the decreases in other areas of lending.

"We've been working on growing (business lending), but also in 2010 there were stressed financial institutions and banks that previously had maybe done business financing and they may have pulled back," Leaver says.

Numerica's deposits increased to $915.7 million at the end of 2010 from about $825 million a year earlier, an increase of almost 11 percent. Its total assets increased by 6.7 percent to $1.06 billion as of Dec. 31, up from $997 million a year earlier.

Part of the credit union's deposit growth is due to the fact that late last year, Numerica took over the deposits from The Union Credit Union, of Spokane, which was ordered by the state Department of Financial Institutions to close due to extreme loan losses. Leaver says Numerica also last year acquired the assets of a Richland, Wash.-based credit union, School Employees Federal Credit Union (SECU),which had assets of about $12 million.

"We had two smaller mergers, but even without that we would have had a strong (deposit) growth of about 8 percent," she says.

Numerica reported a 1.1 percent return on average assets as of Dec. 31, a jump from the 0.36 percent it posted for 2009.

"We're pretty optimistic for 2011," Leaver says. "We have budgeted loan growth of 6.6 percent and growth in deposits of 6 percent. We're hoping the trend will shift slightly to more loans than deposit growth in 2011, and so far are fairly close to budget so hopefully that will continue."