ABA Calls for Top-to-Bottom Assessment of CU Industry

In a June 27 letter to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) board and inspector general, the American Bankers Association (ABA) called for a “top-to-bottom assessment” of whether the credit union industry is living up to its statutory mandate to operate not-for-profit and serve people of “small means.”

The letter cited several troubling findings from a report published earlier this week by Federal Financial Analytics.

Among the findings in the report that ABA asks NCUA to review:

• NCUA needs to impose mission-related requirements
• NCUA regulation and supervision is substandard and poses increasing risks to the credit union system
• NCUA’s definition of “low-income” is misleading, but carries consequences in the marketplace
• Credit unions’ mandate to offer credit for “provident or productive” purposes is all but ignored by NCUA regulation
• Credit union acquisitions of banks show a changed mission

ABA wrote that these findings merit further investigation.

Read the letter.