WASHINGTON-The effort to combine NCUA into a super financial regulator began in earnest last week during a hearing in regulatory reform before the Senate Banking Committee.
The most specific proposal for an NCUA role came form the Financial Services Roundtable, the lobby group for the nation's largest banks and insurers.
Steve Bartlett, the head of the group suggested the creation of a National Financial Institutions Regulator, which would combine NCUA with the Office of Thrift Supervision, Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC and other agencies to regulate banks, thrifts and credit unions, as well as insurers and securities broker-dealers.
The proposal, the first of what will be many reform suggestions, came from an interesting source, as Bartlett is a close friend of CUNA President Dan Mica and has always posed as the credit unions best-even only-friend among the banking lobby groups.
CUNA and NAFCU have vowed to fight any proposal to eliminate the credit union regulator as an independent agency.
