Get ready to publicly defend your community FOM

by Henry Meier, State of Mind

Happy Summer People. Yours truly is back after spending some time in God’s country (a/k/a Long Island) and going to the Harry Styles concert with my 15-year-old daughter. I have to admit I liked it.

I also took some time to read though the results of last Thursday’s NCUA board meeting. And I think the material is important and/or dense enough to be broken up into two blogs. Today I will be doing an overview of some field of membership changes the board approved and tomorrow I will be talking about additional requirements imposed on merging credit unions. State credit unions will be particularly interested. How’s that for a cliff hanger?

Under the new FOM regulations, there are limited circumstances under which credit unions can use a narrative approach to explain why an area should be considered part of a well-defined local community even though it falls outside pre-recognized government boundaries in a very helpful move the NCUA has outlined 13 criteria which credit unions should use in developing the narrative. Now remember, don’t think that your credit union has to satisfy each criterion in order to get approved for a community charter expansion but the more you can address the areas of concern to NCUA, the better off you will be.

 

continue reading »