WASHINGTON—To mark the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CUNA had a card for the CFPB, but in this case it’s a letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray reiterating the trade association’s call for the Bureau to exempt credit unions from regulations inappropriately sized to CUs.
The letter from CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle also asked the Bureau to appropriately tailor future regulations, analyze the cumulative effect of its regulations on credit unions thus far, and more closely work with the NCUA. As CUToday.info reported here, 70 U.S. senators also sent a recent letter to the CFPB with the same request.
“In short, we are concerned that credit union members are becoming collateral damage in the CFPB’s attempts to regulate the ‘banks, lenders, and other financial companies’ in the industry,” wrote Nussle. “Credit unions recognize that they operate in a highly regulated industry and must bear the reasonable costs of regulation. However, unnecessary, overly burdensome, and duplicative regulations mean that credit union members are not able to fully access the high-quality products that credit unions provide. It also means that resources credit unions would otherwise apply to more fully serving their members are spent instead on compliance, and in 2014, the total financial impact of regulations and lost revenue on credit unions was $7.2 billion.
“We write this letter to you today, on the agency’s fifth anniversary, to request that the CFPB more fully consider how regulations are in many circumstances making life more difficult for credit union members, and urge it to reconsider its approach on rulemakings,” continued Nussle. “There are a few specific areas the CFPB should be focusing on to better serve credit union members going forward: Tailoring rules to focus on abusers of consumers by using the CFPB's exemption authority to protect credit union members, analyzing the cumulative impact of rulemakings on credit unions and their members, working more closely with other regulators including the NCUA, and working to understand the credit union difference by visiting credit unions and becoming more familiar with their operations.”