Technology leaders vs. laggards, evidence from the credit union industry

This paper examines small credit unions in the United States from 2002-2011, a period which includes the Great Recession of 2008. It investigates the financial performance behavior of small credit unions that are "technology leaders" versus those classified as "technology laggards". The study uses multivariate factor and discriminant analysis to determine these differences. The model developed correctly classifies credit unions between about 80% and 86% of the time. Although there are several statistically significant performance differences between technology leaders and laggards, asset size of the institutions has the greatest explanatory significance.