The two Washington, D.C.-based, mega-credit unions have seen markedly different results in the past year.

Among the highlights, according to third-quarter call report data recently released by the National Credit Union Administration, was Navy Federal Credit Union crossing the 14 million member mark.

The world’s largest credit union now boasts 14,045,179 members.

That is nearly a 7% increase compared to a year earlier.

Comprehensive industry data for the third quarter is not yet available, but membership growth has been a sore spot across the space for the past few quarters.

In fact, roughly 53% of federally insured credit unions had fewer members at the end of the second quarter of 2024 than they had a year earlier.

Part of Navy Federal’s success in bringing in new members is due to a healthy advertising spend.

According to the call reports, Vienna, Virginia-based Navy FCU has spent almost $145 million on marketing and promotion so far this year. At the same time last year, the credit union had spent $135 million.

By way of comparison, Pentagon Federal Credit Union – the third largest credit union in the U.S. – spent $36 million on marketing and promotion so far this year. PenFed spent about $43 million on advertising a year earlier.

In terms of asset growth, Navy FCU had $180.8 billion in assets at the end of the third quarter. That represents a 7% increase compared to a year earlier.

Meanwhile, assets have shrunk for PenFed.

The McLean, Virginia-based company had  $32.7 billion of assets at Sept. 30 compared to $35.4 billion a year ago. Membership also fell during the year for PenFed, from 2.86 million to 2.84 million members.

Navy Federal earned roughly $1.5 billion in the first three quarters of 2024, a 21% increase compared with a year earlier, according to call report data from the NCUA.

For PenFed, earnings fell by nearly 49% from $115 million in the third quarter of 2023 to $58.6 million in the most recent quarter.