Compliance

As the deadline approaches for credit unions to have in place a written policy and program on interest-rate risk management, questions have been raised about whether ALM teams have been paying enough attention to the deposit side of the analysis.

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal court here agreed Friday to dismiss a member’s suit claiming that Star One CU violated consumer laws by the way it processes debit transactions, the seventh overdraft suit dismissed out of a total of nine filed against credit union since April.

DALLAS – Just as Congress is poised to ease the proliferation of lawsuits over ATM fee disclosures, a new kind of legal peril is facing credit unions over the Americans With Disabilities Act and its newly effective requirement to make all ATM accessible to the blind.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA, which said last week it approved an additional 553 federally chartered credit unions to low-income status and its exemption from the member business loan cap, said this morning it plans to add another 400 state chartered credit unions to the list, providing them with the ability to accept non-member deposits, secondary capital and the ability to tap into NCUA’s low-rate community development loans, as well as exceed the 12.25% of assets limit on commercial loans.

MOLINE, Ill. – State regulators fined DHCU Community CU $10,000 for violating rules on granting an unsecured consumer loan.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA said this morning credit unions now have more flexibility when working with members seeking loans for business vehicles.

What started as a standard conference speech by NCUA Chairman Debbie Matz turned into a sharp verbal exchange with State Employees CU CEO Jim Blaine last week over still-unresolved issues regarding oversight of state-chartered CUs in North Carolina.

WASHINGTON – The banking lobby is irate over NCUA’s exemptions for more than 550 credit unions from the congressional member business loan cap just as Congress is poised to once again defeat the credit unions’ efforts to raise the cap.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The NCUA Board is expected to approve a new permissible investment for federally insured credit unions at next week’s monthly meeting, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS.

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers are racing against next week’s close of the congressional sessions and trying to break free the credit union-backed bill to eliminate the dual fee disclosures required at ATMs.

WASHINGTON – Two credit union executives were named yesterday to the 25-member Consumer Advisory Board for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will provide advice to the new agencyon a consumer financial issues and emerging market trends.

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling, one of the top candidates to assume control of the House Financial Services Committee next year, sharply criticized the Dodd-Frank Act, saying it had severely damaged financial institutions.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA said it has approved an additional 550 credit unions over the past month for low-income status under an initiative aimed at expanding access to capital in drought-stricken states, making those credit unions exempt from the congressional cap on member business loans.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A federal court here agreed yesterday to dismiss two more class action suits challenging credit union practices on overdrafts, the fifth and sixth suits to be dismissed in the past two weeks.

As the presidential and congressional elections grow closer, a key issue for credit unions is who will that president appoint to top regulatory positions, not to mention what Congress might do to those agencies.

If showing up is half the battle, then CUNA and NAFCU are bent on winning.

The announcement by NCUA that it had doubled the number of CUs eligible for a low-income designation, which would allow exceptions to the member business loan cap, only affects approximately a quarter of the 1,001 CUs included under the expanded eligibility.

LOS ANGELES – Lawyers for two members of Educational Employees FCU agreed Friday to voluntarily dismiss an overdraft suit they brought against the Fresno credit union, as the plaintiffs’ bar’s case against credit unions appears to be dissolving.

WASHINGTON – NCUA on Friday issued a report to the Senate Banking Committee defending the agency’s opposition to proposed legislation that would create a new examinations appeals process and a national Ombudsman where dissatisfied credit unions and banks could appeal their regulators’ examination findings.

In a big election year such as this one, the actual legislative cycle gets truncated and the noise generated by all the campaigning can make it look like a time when nothing is getting done.