WASHINGTON–Here’s a look at what credit unions are watching in Congress and in Washington this week:
Today
- Senate Banking Committee: Oversight of the Status of the Consolidated Audit Trail
- House Financial Services Committee: The End of Affordable Housing? A Review of the Trump Administration’s Plans to Change Housing Finance in America
- House Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions: An Examination of the Decline of Minority Depository Institutions and the Impact on Underserved Communities
Wednesday
- House Financial Services Committee: An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors
Wednesday/Thursday
- CFPB’s Credit Union Advisory Council meets, with HMDA, debt collection on the agenda. The Thursday meeting will be a joint meeting with the CFPB’s Community Advisory Board and the Community Bank Advisory Council.
Thursday
- Senate Banking Committee: Data Ownership: Exploring Implications for Data Privacy Rights and Data Valuation
- NCUA Board Meeting: On Thursday, the NCUA board will meet with the agenda including proposals to clarify its FOM rules in response to an Appeals Court’s ruling, as well as a briefing on cybersecurity and a proposal around receiving public unit and nonmember shares up to 50% of paid-in and unimpaired capital and surplus less than any public unit and nonmember shares.
Legislation
CUNA’s chief advocacy officer, Eli Joseph, said the trade group is also monitoring progress of HR 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act, as well as HR 4617, the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy Act.
Earlier, CUNA sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in support of the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019, which addresses the redundancies, unnecessary burdens, and opportunities for efficiencies within the Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) framework.
In the letter, CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle notes the compliance burden the current framework creates for credit unions who are required to report every cash transaction of $10,000 or more, even when the credit union knows that the transaction has no criminal implications. CUNA also noted the dollar amount thresholds included in the BSA/AML framework have not been updated since the law was originally enacted in 1970.
“In today’s market, the $10,000 Currency Transaction Report (CTR) threshold has the same buying power as $1,500 when the law was enacted fifty years ago – according to the Consumer Pricing Index’s Inflation Calculator provided by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics,” Nussle wrote.
CUNA said it fully supports Chairwoman Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) amendment that would that would add the text of the COUNTER Act of 2019 to the underlying bill. The COUNTER Act would index the CTR reporting threshold for inflation every five-years after enactment and further study the impact of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).