CUs Cool To NCUA Community ReinvestmentBid

WASHINGTON - (02/10/06) – Under increasing pressure fromCongress to monitor credit unions’ service to the underservedNCUA on Friday introduced a new community reinvestment-likeevaluation that has been traditionally been shot down by creditunions. NCUA Chairman JoAnn Johnson said the regulator will use thedata collected from a sampling of credit unions to illustrate toCongress what credit unions are doing to meet their mission ofserving the underserved. “With this data collected, NCUA isresponding to specific congressional requests and looks forward tothe opportunity for enhancing the clarity of credit union serviceto Americans from all walks of life,” Johnson said in astatement. The credit union lobby, which fought hard to defeat anearlier proposal for voluntary reporting on serving theunderserved, were cool to the new NCUA plan. “NAFCU believesit is very important for credit unions to be able to demonstratetheir success in reaching out to the underserved. The datacollection program that NCUA announced today, to the extent it isintended to provide a profile of credit union membership,unfortunately may not accomplish that objective,” said NAFCUPresident Fred Becker. Under the new program, NCUA examiners willbe collecting two types of data from some credit unions. The firstwill aim at discerning the level of serving the underserved. Thesecond is to collect information on compensation and benefits forsenior managers.