The National Credit Union Administration and the Export-Import Bank of the United States have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at boosting small business lending at credit unions and increasing awareness of ExIm programs over the course of the next three years.
The MOU states that the two agencies will participate in a series of initiatives, including webinars and training events, in order to increase credit unions’ understanding of Ex-Im guaranteed loans and resources.
In a prepared statement announcing the partnership, NCUA Chairman Rodney Hood suggested that partnerships like this can enable credit unions to help small businesses survive the current recession.
“One of those solutions is to point lenders and borrowers toward the support resources that already exist. You might think of this as the ‘low-hanging fruit’: the resources are already available; we just need to educate people on how to access them,” he said.
One factor that may help entice credit unions to utilize the Export-Import Bank is that those loans are exempt from the member business lending cap.
Kimberly Reed, president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank, said in a press release that the MOU “represents Ex-Im’s first-ever targeted outreach to credit unions and their millions of customers.”
Hood noted that not all CUs work with small businesses that handle export trade, but “for those that do, knowing where to turn for help with financing and being able to share that information with small business borrowers will be a tremendous boon.”
Credit union commercial lending has grown significantly in recent years, and at the end of 2019 the industry had more than $81 billion in commercial loans.
This is not the first time the two agencies have been linked. NCUA board member Mark McWatters was nominated to the ExIm board by President Obama in 2016, but that nomination — made near the end of the president’s term — never received serious Senate consideration. Early the following year President Trump elevated McWatters to NCUA chairman before granting Hood that title last year after his Senate confirmation.
