Late Fees Will Hit CUs After April 25 Call Report Deadline: NCUA

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The National Credit Union Administration will start fining credit unions that file call reports after the April 25 deadline for the first quarter, an agency spokesman told Credit Union Journal Thursday immediately following the agency's March board meeting.

The NCUA announced earlier this year that late filers could face a $1 million-per-day fine from the agency for each day the call report is overdue.

Public Affairs Specialist John Fairbanks said he cannot estimate exactly when the levies will start.

In a February conference call with the industry, NCUA Chairman Debbie Matz said she was frustrated by late filings by many credit unions, noting 1,100 were late for their fourth quarter reports while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. had no late filers for same period with the banks it regulated.

At the Thursday's board meeting, Matz also expressed frustration her agency does not have the power to regulate credit union vendors.

Her comment came while NCUA was in the process of approving a proposal with other financial regulators setting guidelines for states to set up agencies to regulate appraisal management companies.

The other agencies include the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Treasury Department, the FDIC, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Matz said the Dodd-Frank-mandated rule making focuses on the need uncovered by the financial crisis to prevent conflicts of interest and fraud in real estate appraisals, but lamented NCUA's lack of power to oversee them.

"We have made it quite clear to Congress it would be good for us to have vendor authority," agency spokesman Fairbanks noted.

NCUA attorney John Brolin told the board that credit unions would not be affected by the rule because CUs usually go to appraisers directly rather than through appraisal management companies.

In other NCUA news, Chief Financial Officer Mary Ann Woodson told the board that the Temporary Corporate Credit Union Stabilization Fund's net position at year's end for 2013 improved to a negative $142 million compared with $3.45 billion on the last day of 2012.

"Effectively managing the Stabilization Fund to minimize federally insured credit union assessments is a top NCUA priority," Matz said in a statement released after the meeting. "Settlements with JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, coupled with improvements in anticipated future cash flows from legacy assets of the NCUA Guaranteed Notes program, led to a sizable improvement in the Stabilization Fund's net position in 2013. I'm hopeful we can forgo charging assessments not only in 2014, but in future years as well."