38 Pages of Heavily Redacted Documents on Progressive-PenFed Merger

On January 7, 2019, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) regarding the emergency merger of Progressive Credit Union (New York, NY) into Pentagon Federal Credit Union (McLean, VA).

Specifically, I requested 2018 agency records regarding 1) the merger application, agreement, and NCUA approval documents; 2) communications between the NCUA and potential credit union suitors of Progressive; and 3) internal NCUA communications of potential merger partners with Progressive.

On September 25, NCUA granted my request in part and denied it in part.

The agency did provide 38 pages in response to my request, which were heavily redacted, on the unassisted emergency merger between Progressive and Pentagon FCU.

NCUA wrote that the "[r]edacted and withheld information is exempt from FOIA release under one or more of the exemptions at 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(4), (5), (6), and (8)."

NCUA did not provide any information on potential credit union suitors for Progressive Credit Union other than Pentagon FCU. .

One section of a September 18 letter to NCUA and the New York Department of Financial Services from Robert Familiant, CEO of Progressive, on Progressive's emergency required expeditious action and a lack of reasonably available alternatives for Progressive was totally redacted. What does the lack of reasonably available alternatives mean?

In addition, the September 18 letter stated that there were seven reasons why this emergency merger with Pentagon FCU was in the public interest. However, 3 reasons were totally redacted and parts of the other 4 reasons were partially redacted.

The partially redacted reasons that the emergency merger was in the public interest were:

• the merger would eliminate the risk of a loss to the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund;
• the merger would benefit Progressive members by expanding products and services available to them;
• the merger would eliminate duplicate positions and expenses; and
• Pentagon FCU wanted to merge now.

The section in the application detailing the reasons for the merger were extensively redacted.

Outside of saying the merger was in both credit unions' best interest, the record was pretty thin on how the merger benefited Pentagon FCU or its members.

Another redaction was the analysis of the adequacy of Progressive's allowance for loan and lease losses.

The document further redacted other financial information including the combined financials after merger adjustments.