In an op-ed for CUInsight, America’s Credit Unions Chief Advocacy Officer Carrie Hunt expressed that the NCUA “has peddled party-line policies, gotten overly involved in consumer protection, and placed more regulatory burden on credit unions.” She called on the agency to “return to its roots and be an independent regulator.”
Hunt noted regulators, including the CFPB and NCUA, have heavily scrutinized credit unions’ non-interest income, but added that credit unions use non-interest income to offset the costs of providing products and services to their members.
“They don’t use non-interest income to pad their pockets or pay out strong dividends to shareholders,” she wrote. “This money goes back to helping credit unions serve their members and communities. The NCUA should know this, and attacking credit unions’ ability to earn non-interest income only hurts consumers.”
She also highlighted that overregulation of the industry is contributing to consolidation and called on the NCUA to regulate independently of the CFPB, FDIC, and other federal financial regulators.
Hunt concluded by acknowledging that independent regulators can help “cut through the political noise and provide a common-sense path forward that benefits everyone,” but urged the NCUA to return to independent regulation.
“The NCUA needs to step back and look at the bigger picture. Its mission is to protect the credit union industry and its members,” she wrote. “But the regulations keep piling up, and the industry is consolidating. If the NCUA isn’t careful, they won’t have an industry to regulate.”
