By Ed Speed

Jim Nussle and his team at America’s Credit Unions (ACU) have once again won a fight—not for consumers, not for transparency, but for the credit union industry’s right to keep abusing its own members in the dark.

Once again, ACU has stepped in to protect credit unions—not from Wall Street, not from excessive regulation, but from their own members. Just as credit union trade associations did with so-called bankruptcy and credit card reform, they worked behind the scenes to shield credit unions from scrutiny over their overdraft (OD) and non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee practices (The CU Daily has coverage here https://thecudaily.com/gac-coverage-ncua-announces-call-report-data-on-od-nsf-income-will-be-confidential)

This effort by Nussle & Co. started over a year ago with a March 21, 2024, letter to the NCUA, which stated, in part:

“The release of certain information on overdraft and NSF fees charged by California state-chartered credit unions and banks will be spun in a misleading and potentially inaccurate way to meet the agenda of the media. To avoid unnecessary and potentially irreparable reputational risk, needlessly introducing reputational and litigation risks.”

Translation? If the public knew how much credit unions were gouging their own members in fees, they’d be outraged.

The ACU team got what they wanted.

The NCUA has now announced that, effective March 31, 2025, individual credit unions’ OD/NSF fee income will no longer be disclosed on Call Reports. The data will still be collected for “supervisory” purposes, but the public will never see which credit unions are raking in millions—sometimes billions—off their own members’ financial struggles. Instead, NCUA will only release industry-wide, aggregated figures, effectively burying the truth.

A Stunning Cover-Up

This is a stunning reversal. Until now, consumer advocates, journalists, and policymakers could track which credit unions depend on fee revenue instead of sound lending and member service. It was one of the few transparency measures to keep these tax-exempt institutions honest.

Just how bad was the fee abuse? Consider the Consolidated CU 5300, which reflected that  $3.2 billion in NSF/OD feeswere “earned” while reporting a total industry-wide net income of $4.1 billion in the second quarter of 2024. That means nearly 78% of its earnings came from overdraft and NSF fees. With the new NCUA policy, these numbers will no longer be available to the public.  

But then, only credit unions larger than $1 billion were required to report.    This tells me the core economic engines of credit unions are on life support.  The business model is no longer working.  The death of the movement will be ugly and painful, public for all to see and deserved.

An Insult

NCUA Chairman Kyle Hauptman justified this cover-up by claiming that public disclosure of overdraft fee data “discouraged” credit unions from serving low-income and underserved communities. In other words, credit unions were so embarrassed by their reliance on OD/NSF fees that they might have stopped serving poor consumers altogether.

That appalling insult to anyone who has studied logic is as cynical as it is ridiculous. If an institution cannot serve low-income members without preying on them, it has no business calling itself a credit union.

Hauptman also claimed that overdraft fees can be “the best option in a bad situation.” That’s the same nonsense big banks peddled for years while regulators cracked down on predatory OD/NSF practices. The reality is that these fees disproportionately harm working-class consumers, trapping them in cycles of debt. That’s why banks, under pressure from regulators, have begun reducing or eliminating these fees entirely.

In full transparency, I brought OD/NSF “protection” into our credit union when I was the CEO.   And I used the emotional appeals with images of a single mother needing to buy diapers and medicine in the middle of the night. I regret it very much.  I should not have ever started it. 

Why Hide the Numbers? Because They’re Indefensible.

This isn’t about protecting consumers. It’s about protecting credit unions from accountability to their own members.. The NCUA’s own 2025 Research Note found that credit unions generating high fee income weren’t offsetting it with better rates or lower costs elsewhere. That means members were getting squeezed on both sides—paying excessive fees while receiving no real financial benefit.

With this new policy, NCUA is giving credit unions even more cover to operate in the shadows.

For an industry that loves to parade its “People Helping People” slogan, this is pure hypocrisy. If credit unions truly believed in their cooperative mission, they wouldn’t be afraid of transparency.

Congress, consumer watchdogs, and credit union members themselves should demand that this disgraceful decision be reversed. Transparency isn’t optional, it’s essential. And any financial institution that fears telling its own members the truth about fees is one that deserves neither their business nor their loyalty.

Edward Speed is the retired CEO of a multi-billion-dollar credit union, who holds a

Masters Degree in Theology. These days he spends his time serving food, washing

dishes and sweeping floors at a Catholic Work House helping homeless senior citizens.