WASHINGTON – Washington Telephone FCU said yesterday it has installed the Code Green Network’s Content Inspection Appliance to protect member and credit union information. The single-box solution enable IT, security and compliance employees to easily monitor digital content flows to the Internet, discover data leaks, and enforce automated policies to log, alert, block and encrypt or re-route data. The system is geared especially to protecting social security, credit card and account numbers. Code Green is based in Santa Clara, Calif.

MILWAUKEE – Metavante Corp. announced yesterday it has contracted with Monitise, the European provider of mobile banking systems, to operate a mobile payments system in the U.S. The joint venture will provide a common and secure interface for cell phones and other mobile systems. Metavante, a unit of Marshall & Ilsley banking, provides payment technologies for more than 8,600 banks and credit unions and businesses. The system will be built using similar principles incorporated in the U.K. by Monitise through a joint venture with LINK, the operator of the U.K.’s ATM system. Metavante, which operates the NYCE EFT network, will act as the host system in the U.S., which already provides person-to-person and business-to-business payments. Monitise is a unit of Morse Plc., a technology development and consulting company.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Intuit Inc., which recently completed the acquisition of Digital Insight, said it has terminated an agreement to purchase the Electronic Clearing House, electronic payments network. Both companies decided it was in their best interests to terminate the agreement. Intuit had agreed to acquire ECHO for $18.75 a share, or $142 million. ECHO adjourned a previously scheduled March 27 shareholders meeting, where the deal was supposed to be voted.

WASHINGTON – NCUA is confident that credit unions themselves have little exposure to to the imploding subprime mortgage market but the federal regulator is concerned about a possible contagion effect on credit unions, NCUA Chairman JoAnn Johnson testified to Congress yesterday. “Federally insured credit union mortgages are performing well, in relation to the broader mortgage market, but NCUA is concerned about the ‘ripple affect’ of the dislocation to the subprime mortgage market on federally insured credit union and credit union members,” Johnson told the House Financial Services’ subcommittee on Financial Institutions, during yesterday’s hearing on the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market. Johnson trouble signs have emerged in the credit union industry in the way of rising delinquencies and foreclosures, though at a much lesser pace than for banks and other mortgage lenders. For example, mortgage loans delinquent over 30 days rose from 0.79% at year-end 2005 to 0.99% at year-end 2006, but still less than a fourth of the rate for banks. In addition, mortgage loans subject to foreclosures among credit unions soared 20% over the last three quarters to $165 billion. But Johnson said credit unions generally don’t engage in the most infamous kind of subprime loans, like 2-28s ARMs, mostly because they don’t have programs that are sophisticated enough, but also because federal interest rate caps of 18% would bar the add-on fees and charges that are causing many subprime borrowers to default. This has left credit unions with just a tiny slice of the subprime market, Johnson told lawmakers.

BREMERTON, Wash. – At least two people printed their own checks off a fraudulent credit union account to go on a car-buying spree, but they made the mistake of listing the police station as the address for the credit union, according to police. Two suspects were arrested after using the checks purportedly drawn on Kitspa CU to buy eight cars for a total of almost $200,000. On at least one occasion, a woman purporting to be from the credit union, spoke on the telephone with the auto dealership. The checks were produced with sophisticated software and magnetic ink, each with a plausible bank account number. The address in the upper left corner, however, once the offices for Kitsap FCU, is now the local police headquarters.

Correction appended below.NEWARK, N.J. – Newark International Airport, one of the main hubs for Continental Airlines, has become a microcosm of credit union competition, as increasing numbers of credit unions have entered the market to serve the hundreds of thousands of airline employees over the last few three years. Since then, three credit unions, including the giants American Airlines FCU and Chartway FCU, as well as FAA Service FCU, have established a presence on the ground here; even before the hostile offer earlier this month from $1.6 billion Wings Financial FCU to take over Continental FCU. The growing competition has put Continental, which is in a five-year steady decline in membership, at a disadvantage, according to some of the credit union’s own members and ex-members. “I used to have all my accounts there, but now I went over to Chartway,” Jose Coste, an airport worker, told The Credit Union Journal yesterday, one of a series of interview yesterday with Continental members. Gladstone Hall, another ex-Continental member, said he moved his accounts to Chartway because he was disappointed in the fees he paid at Continental FCU. Christian Cepeda, another Continental FCU member, said he opened a Chartway account to get a new iPod, even though he likes the service at Continental, but now he can shop th better rate between the two credit unions. Several Continental workers cited the open access to American Airlines FCU’s new branch, as opposed to the secure entry at the Continental branch, limiting access to members. Many other credit unions without a physical presence, except for ATM networking, also vie for the allegiance of Continental employees, they said.Correction: The above article incorrectly states that Gladstone Hall, a member of Continental FCU, had closed his CFCU membership. While Mr. Hall has opened anaccount with Chartway FCU, he remains a member in good standing withContinental FCU.

CINCINNATI – The Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati announced the resumption of its American Dream Homeownership Challenge, which funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in downpayment grants to low-income and handicapped borrowers. The program was suspended last May amid concerns that regulators would boost net capital standards for the 12 FHLBs, requiring the bank to hold on to more of its capital. The Cincinnati Bank was the most ardent opponent of the capital proposal, which was shelved indefinitely by the FHLB regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Board. The grants will once again be awarded to customers/members of the Cincinnati Bank’s 741 member banks and credit unions.

LAUREL, Md. – Tower FCU said yesterday it has installed Integrated Media Management’s TotalReceipts document automation technology. TotalReceipts, which has been implemented at 199 credit unions, automates the output of teller transaction receipts. IMM is based in Linden, N.J.

PASADENA, Calif. – Credit unions raised more than $170,000 last week for California Credit Unions for Kids during the second annual wine auction, held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. The funds will go to benefit nine Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals in California. Sponsors of the event include CU Direct Lending, CO-OP Financial Services, Financial Service Centers Cooperative, WesCorp FCU, the California CU League, CUNA Mutual Group, Redwood CU and San Francisco Fire CU. A similar event, a wine auction sponsored by the Oregon and Washington credit union leagues, will be held next month.

ROCKVILLE, Md. – MCT FCU said yesterday it has signed a three-year contract with PSCU Financial Services to implement the company’s PayLynx online bill payment service. MCT FCU will convert its 3,500 online bill payment subscribers in May. The credit union has 58,000 members and $400 million in assets.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA announced yesterday it has granted a charter to a new faith-based low-income credit union to serve parishioners of the New Covenant Christian Church and students of its affiliated parochial schools in the Bronx. The New Covenant Dominion FCU is the first credit union chartered this year. New Covenant Christian Church has four churches in the Bronx, provides educational services for students from pre-school to high school and a bible college, and operates mission programs in Africa and India.

WASHINGTON – Congressman Paul Kanjorski, the chief sponsor of HR 1151 and the fledgling CU Regulatory Improvements Act, was discharged yesterday afternoon from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, after undergoing successful triple bypass surgery on March 19. Kanjorski's cardiac doctors expect that he should be able to return to work in mid-April, following the Congressional spring recess. The recovery will temporarily slow progress on CURIA, which Kanjorski introduced in the House just three days before entering the hospital, because he must personally add any new co-sponsors to the 11 others already signed on. CUNA said as many as a dozen others are ready to add their names to the credit union measure, adding momentum to get a hearing on the proposal. Kanjorski's surgery was routinely scheduled as a result of diagnostic testing and was not the result of a heart attack.

MONTEREY, Calif. – A new legislative threat emerged for state chartered credit unions in the Golden State in the form of a bill that would apply to credit unions the Community Reinvestment Act, which currently requires that banks and thrifts demonstrate their investment in the low-income communities they serve. Credit unions have been fighting off attempts to apply CRA on a national basis, in the face of several studies that question credit unions’ service to their communities. Bill Cheney, president of the California CU League, called the bill, appearing on the final day bills that can be introduced in the state Assembly, a ‘curve ball’ that credit union lobbyists hadn’t expected. "We need to defeat, and we will defeat this bill," Cheney told The Credit Union Journal, at the annual Big Valley Conference here. “It's a bad bill and it would make a bad law." In recent years, studies by the several community development groups, and the Government Accountability Office, have questioned whether credit unions are adequately serving low-income communities, prompting the banking lobby to press their case in Congress that the CRA should be required of credit unions. Only one other state, Massachusetts, has a CRA for its state chartered credit unions.

MONTEREY, Calif. – California's and Nevada's credit unions were told that their trade association stands firmly behind Continental FCU in its efforts to fight off a hostile takeover by the Minnesota’s Wings FCU. "Your league supports Continental FCU's board's authority to act in the best interests of their members," Bill Cheney, president of the California/Nevada leagues, said during the annual Big Valley Conference here of the unprecedented bid toe acquire the El Segundo, Calif., credit union. "This hostile takeover attempt, we feel, is not in the best interests of the credit union or the credit union community. You may have seen that Wings has said Continental is not providing value to its members. We do not believe that an out-of-state-based credit union should be telling members what is in their best interests, what's a good value and what is not." Cheney said the league has been in close contact with Continental CEO Tom Glatt, whom he described as a "great credit union friend."

Community 1 FCU, Greenville, S.C., announced that Rick A. Leonardi was elected president of the Piedmont Chapter of Credit Unions.

WASHINGTON - As the credit union movement struggles with conversions, unsolicited merger bids and other cooperative issues, one of the potential casualties is the integrity, credibility and image of the industry on Capitol Hill.

ENGLEWOOD, COLO. - The 2007 edition of the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program (HSFPP) has now been delivered to the national network of representatives involved in the program and who are responsible for educating America's youth on their finances. During a four-day meeting here, the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) convened more than 130 individuals from their two HSFPP partners, CUNA and the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service and Participating Land-Grant University Cooperative Extension Services.

ALEXANDRIA, VA. - A study released by the Community Financial Services Association, a national trade group for the payday advance industry, said payday loans are not a "welfare reducing" form of credit.

SIBERIA, RUSSIA - World Council of Credit Unions representatives trained 150 Russian credit union executives and government officials on effective regulation and strategies to increase outreach at the Russian Credit Union Forum in Siberia last month.

Mich. Lawmakers Get CURIA Card