WASHINGTON, DC (June 5, 2018) — National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) Regulatory Affairs Counsel Ann Kossachev today sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in support of the agency’s efforts to streamline existing regulations as part of its five-year regulatory review process. She also urged it to conduct a more comprehensive review of its regulations, guidance and interpretive documents to provide even more clarity to regulated entities.
“NAFCU and its member credit unions support the FHFA’s efforts to streamline existing regulations to find efficiencies, eliminate obsolete and conflicting provisions, and find superior methods of accomplishing the same supervisory purpose,” said Kossachev.
Commenting specifically on Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) regulations, Kossachev encouraged the FHFA “to explore ways to simplify the day-to-day operations of the FHLBs to make it easier for credit unions and other members to access liquidity as appropriate and necessary.”
Kossachev also encouraged the FHFA to go through the formal notice and comment rulemaking process required by the Administrative Procedure Act – especially regarding directives to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “Credit unions and other institutions that utilize the GSEs should be entitled to comment throughout the entire process of any policy changes that affect their day-to-day lending procedures,” she wrote.
In another recommendation, Kossachev asked the FHFA to update citations throughout its regulations. “Considering the FHFA’s efforts to reduce regulatory burden and the Trump Administration’s regulatory rollback agenda, there may be existing citations to regulations that are now obsolete,” she wrote. She suggested this kind of a review be done more consistently – even annually.
The FHFA made a request for comments in April as part of required regulatory review process on ways to reduce regulatory overlap, possible approaches that would be less burdensome than current regulation and how to clarify requirements.
The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions is the only national trade association focusing exclusively on federal issues affecting the nation’s federally-insured credit unions. NAFCU membership is direct and provides credit unions with the best in federal advocacy, education and compliance assistance. For more information on NAFCU, go to www.nafcu.org or @NAFCU on Twitter.
