CU Insight

June 27, 2012

The Honorable Timothy F. Geithner
Secretary of the Treasury
United States Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20220

RE: FSOC’s Role to Reduce Regulatory Compliance Burden on Credit Unions

Dear Secretary Geithner:

On behalf of the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU), the only trade association that exclusively represents the interests of our nation’s Federal credit unions (FCUs), I am writing to you in your capacity as Chairman of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC).

As you know, under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Act), the FSOC has a duty to facilitate regulatory coordination.  This duty includes facilitating information sharing and coordination among the member agencies of domestic financial services policy development, rulemaking, examinations, reporting requirements and enforcement actions.  Through this role, the FSOC is effectively charged with ameliorating weaknesses within the regulatory structure, promoting a safer and a more stable system.

In regards to this goal, NAFCU would like to emphasize how important it is to credit unions for our industry’s copious regulators to coordinate with each other to help mitigate regulatory burden.  As highlighted in the testimony of NAFCU Board Member Ed Templeton before the House Financial Services Committee on May 9, 2012, it is not any single regulation, but the panoply of the regulatory regime of numerous regulators, each operating “within their own lanes” and with minimal, if any, interagency coordination, that not only helps create, but significantly magnifies, today’s undue regulatory burden on credit unions and other small financial institutions.

In his testimony, Mr. Templeton, CEO of a small credit union that serves a large number of underserved Americans, emphasized the difficulties facing credit unions to plan ahead and keep pace with the rapid rate of regulatory changes under the Act.  As Mr. Templeton testified, 96.4% of credit unions in a NAFCU survey last spring reported that they were devoting more staff time to regulatory compliance than they did in 2008.  Consequently, credit unions have not been able to use their resources efficiently as they are devoting far too much time and money on regulatory compliance and related functions; they should be empowered, instead, to expend such time and resources to serving their members.
     
The array of regulations that are making operating a credit union more and more difficult are being fired simultaneously from multiple directions and by a host of  agencies.  For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued several rules and is soon expected to propose numerous major rules that would greatly impact credit unions’ products and services, including savings, mortgage lending, and credit and debit card services.  Concomitantly, the credit union’s principle regulator, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), is issuing regulations on issues such as concentration and interest rate risk, loan participations, credit union service organizations and appraisal management.  At the same time, the Department of Justice is issuing regulations on physical assess to ATMs, while the Department of Labor is issuing regulations on employee rights and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is issuing regulations on currency transaction reports and suspicious activity reports.

As we have approached each agency regarding the ever-increasing regulatory burden, they quickly respond that the rules being issued by other agencies are outside of their purview.  NAFCU believes the FSOC is well-positioned to rectify this lack of coordination. In that regard, we ask that you establish within the FSOC robust inter-agency coordination on the issuance of rules impacting financial institutions.

NAFCU also urges the FSOC to establish policy requiring member agencies to conduct and publish a thorough cost-benefit analysis prior to issuing regulations as well as a separate cost-benefit analysis a year after each regulation the agency prescribes and every other year thereafter.  Also, a cost-benefit analysis should be conducted every two years on each regulation that an agency has on its books, with the agency required to justify the regulations’ continued existence.  These cost analyses should be reviewed by the FSOC to assess the total impact on the financial services industry. We strongly believe that conducting such exercises would better instruct regulators of the high cost of compliance, and equip them with the information necessary to assess whether a particular regulation is effective and justifiable.
     
America’s credit unions have long been reliable sources of financial advancement for millions of people.  We believe that the FSOC, with your leadership, is in a position to help credit unions and other small financial institutions continue to achieve their mission of serving their members.
     
NAFCU appreciates your attention to our concerns.  Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me or Carrie Hunt, NAFCU’s General Counsel and Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, at 703-842-2234.

Sincerely,

Fred R. Becker, Jr.
President/CEO