Trades Push NCUA To Cut Specific Compliance Requirements

WASHINGTON – As NCUA prepares to examine one-third of its rules and regs during its annual regulatory review, CUNA is again stressing that the regulator must not and cannot add to the compliance burden already on CUs.

Understanding the hefty compliance burden CUs already face, Mary Dunn, CUNA SVP and deputy general counsel, said the trade group filed a comment letter with NCUA Friday stating that whatever changes NCUA makes to the rules it will soon review, those changes should “refrain from adding to regulatory burden of credit unions, whether it is a new rule or revising an existing rule, unless there is a well-documented and compelling need to do so.”

CUNA’s comments focused on NCUA rules Part 748, Security Program, Report of Suspected Crimes, Suspicious Transactions, Catastrophic Acts, and Bank Secrecy Act Compliance; and Part 790, Description of NCUA and Request for Agency Action.

NAFCU weighed in on the NCUA review with its own comment letter Friday, focusing much of its attention on SAFE Act Registration, Troubled Debt Restructuring, Member Business Loans, Credit Union Service Organizations, CU Investment Powers, and the Regulatory Flexibility Program. “We think Reg Flex needs to go back to the way it was (before NCUA moved away from Reg Flex during the recession and tightened review frequency and standards for credit unions that qualify,” said Tessema Tefferi, associate director of regulatory affairs.

In its letter, NAFCU also urged NCUA to quickly implement Executive Order 13579, executed by President Barack Obama on July 11. The Executive Order provides that decisions made by independent regulatory agencies such as NCUA “are informed and improved by allowing interested members of the public to have meaningful opportunity to participate in rulemaking,” and directs “independent agencies to ‘consider how best to promote retrospective analysis of rules that may be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome, and to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them in accordance with what has been learned,’” NAFCU President Fred Becker wrote.

 

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Compliance
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER