Win $500 for your thoughts

Give me your tired, your broken your burdensome reg, yearning for relief!!! (And I’ll give you five hundred bucks) Well, at least one of you. What spurred this? I just had what seemed like meeting number 1,000 with one of our federal regulators and in a gracious exchange I offered that I had never seen credit unions more upset with the burdens of regulations. The response was immediate, “Give me something specific.” So here it goes…

Over the years I have seen regulatory battles come and go. As the President of CUNA, the NCUA was in my left ear with concerns about safety and soundness and our members were in my right ear seeking for regulatory relief. To this day it is rare for me to run into a credit union representative who does not want to discuss the challenges of serving their members in what they feel is an overly burdensome regulatory environment.

Meanwhile our regulators have always told me that their ears are open to the thoughts and concerns of credit unions. Furthermore, they are more than willing to consider adjustments or alternatives to regulations that are viewed as overly burdensome, ineffective or unnecessary. They always ask for specifics!

My experience has been that there is often a dose of communication breakdown when it comes to getting specific about what rules/regs should be amended and EXACTLY what change should look like. In an effort to facilitate an exchange of ideas and solutions (not just examples of where regulation falls short), I would like to offer a challenge. The winner of this challenge will receive $500.00.

THE CHALLENGE

In a statement of 1,000 words or less:

• Highlight a specific NCUA rule or regulation and how it negatively impacts your credit union or credit unions in general.
• Provide a clear amendment, alternative to the regulation that would lessen its burden and how/why safety and soundness could be maintained with the change.
• Make a compelling case for why your example and solution should be the winner of the challenge! (Of course examples that have widespread impact are important however this is not the only factor under consideration)

THE RULES AND INFO

• All entries must be submitted via email before November 16th, 2013.
• Email submissions to The DMA Group: contact@danmica.com. Along with your submission please include your name, email address and contact information (you will receive a confirmation email within 48 hours)
• All entrants will be treated as confidential. No individual or institution will be identified unless we are specifically authorized in writing to do so. No personal information will be sold or shared.
• Contest winner will be chosen solely at the discretion of The DMA Group

Please understand that this is just my humble, hopefully helpful and possibly  amusing way to draw out specific regulatory changes for consideration. I will review your responses and tabulate the results and make the generic responses and the winning entry available in my December CU Insight column. Keep in mind that this is just a very basic attempt to find out if there is one or more specific regulation that the credit union system feels is the most burdensome.

Good luck to you all.