ARLINGTON, Va.—Will Congress push regulators to find ways to make it easier for credit unions, and the exam process, to go paperless?
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC),House Financial Services Committee ranking member, told attendees at NAFCU’s Virtual Congressional Caucus he is in favor of asking regulators find ways to make permanent many of the technology changes FIs have quickly implemented to manage their way through the health crisis.
“The nature of a digital signature now, and the capacity to verify that the person is who they say they are, is now often better than having notary take your license and stamp their indicia on a document,” said McHenry. “So, maybe some of the older forms…we have a broad rethinking of the physical world interaction we have by paper. That means regulators have to make permanent these huge strides financial institutions have been permitted to make in the last few months. Undertake a full-scale review of what is required of credit union in the production of paper. There still is a lot of paperwork that goes with regulatory oversight that is not keeping in touch with 21st Century.”
Addressing whether Washington has reached a tipping point to finally agree on a national data security measure, McHenry said Congress must recognize the huge data security burden facing financial institutions.
“Financial institutions have the highest regulatory burden of any organization in the U.S.,” he said. “Your healthcare provider can provide more information on you than your bank or credit union can to any third party. We need policymakers to understand financial institutions are already greatly constrained with what they do with their data. We need some consensus on a basic standard and what individuals have with basic privacy rights. That means we have to have a values-based proposition rather than regulatory fiat around data usage and security.”