WASHINGTON—In testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee today during a hearing on regulatory relief for community banks and credit unions, NCUA’s Larry Fazio said the agency has been taking steps to appropriately “scale” its oversight and to better “calibrate” its rules.
Fazio, director of Examination and Insurance, noted that three quarters of CUs have assets of less than $100 million, and as a result have fewer resources “available to respond to marketplace, technological, legislative and regulatory changes.”
“NCUA, therefore, is acutely aware of the need to calibrate our rules and examinations to remove any unnecessary burden on these smaller credit unions,” Fazio said during his testimony.
To that end, he said the agency has sought to provide regulatory relief “when it is sensible and within the agency’s authority to do so” and that NCUA has over the past three years taken many actions to cut red tape and provide lasting benefits to credit unions.
Fazio said NCUA has sought to tailor regulation and supervision based on credit unions’ size and complexity, has conducted regular regulatory reviews, and has sought to be reasonable and cost-effective in its rulemaking.
Fazio concluded his remarks by outlining regulatory relief measures the agency is taking or is considering, and outlined several ways Congress could ease the regulatory burden on credit unions, including changing some “hard-coded” provisions of the FCU Act, making changes to FOM rules, and addressing the cap on MBLs.
Fazio’s full statement to the committee can be found in CUToday.info’s The Vault here.