IG Report Recommends NCUA Add S to CAMEL Rating

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Office of Inspector General (IG) recommended that NCUA add sensitivity to market risk (S) to its CAMEL rating.

Almost two decades earlier (January 1, 1997), the federal bank regulators -- The Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- added S to their CAMELS rating.

The IG report noted that NCUA may not be effectively capturing interest rate risk (IRR) under "L" in its CAMEL rating.

The IG wrote:

[w]e determined that NCUA may not be effectively capturing IRR when assigning a composite CAMEL rating to a credit union. NCUA currently assesses sensitivity to market risk under the "L" in its CAMEL rating. However, combining sensitivity to market risk with liquidity may understate or obscure instances of high IRR exposure in a credit union. The addition of an “S” rating to its CAMEL Rating System to capture and separately assess a credit union’s sensitivity to market risk should improve NCUA’s ability to accurately measure and monitor interest rate risk. To better reflect the risk that changes in market rates will adversely affect a credit union’s capital and earnings, and in conjunction with a stated goal of NCUA’s IRR working group, we are making two recommendations in this report. We recommend NCUA management modify the current CAMEL Rating System by adding an “S” for market risk [S]ensitivity, and revising the “L” rating to reflect only liquidity factors.

Read the report.