NAFCU to NCUA: ‘Exhaust all options’ before charging premium

NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger, in a letter Monday, again strongly urged the NCUA to reconsider whether a 2017 National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund premium is necessary and to “exhaust all options prior to charging such a premium.”

Berger wrote the agency in response to a letter NCUA Board Chairman Rick Metsger sent to House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Sean Duffy, R-Wis., last week. Metsger told Duffy that NCUA’s current analysis shows the NCUSIF equity ratio isn’t expected to fall to its statutory floor of 1.2 percent in 2017, even under the model’s severely adverse scenario.

In light of this, Berger told Metsger that the agency’s “stated need of charging a premium of 3-6 basis points in 2017 is not supported” by its own findings.

“While it does appear that the equity ratio could approach the statutory-floor of 1.2 percent, such a scenario is far from certain,” Berger wrote. He urged the agency to not charge a premium “unless it is absolutely necessary, and only after all other options have been exhausted, such as more prudent management of the NCUSIF expenses and investment portfolio, or until the dissolution of the Temporary Corporate Credit Union Stabilization Fund (TCCUSF) is complete.”

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