WASHINGTON—In what’s an ongoing task for credit unions on Capitol Hill, America’s Credit Unionssaid its focus over the next few weeks will educating Congress about credit unions as the trade group’s Governmental Affairs Conference approaches.
“We’re going to be working on a couple of different things,” said Greg Mesack, senior vice president of Advocacy at America’s Credit Unions, of the shorter-term Hill focus. “One is the ongoing mission of education and telling the story to members of Congress…We did a lot a great work last year with (Don’t Tax My Credit Union), but there’s more work to do.”
Targeted Relief Sought
Beyond that, Mesack said the organization will be working on targeted regulatory relief, including work with NCUA and the CFPB. With the latter, Mesack said a focus will be on raising HMDA thresholds “so small credit unions that are getting crushed by unnecessary under regulations could have some relief.”
He said America’s Credit Unions is also joining others in waiting to see how NCUA will be deploying rules implementing the GENIUS Act.
And then there’s GAC, for which Mesack said America’s Credit Unions is expecting upwards of 6,000 people to be in attendance. “That’s going to take up a lot of our time making sure that we get everything lined up,” he said.
Comment Letters Filed
Separately, America’s Credit Unions has filed two new comment letters.
HMDA Reporting (CFPB)
In a comment letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the trade group urged the Bureau to use its current HMDA information collection review to meaningfully reduce reporting requirements that have grown far beyond the statute’s core purpose.
“While credit unions support HMDA’s transparency and fair lending goals, current reporting rules require extensive manual data tracking, reconciliation, and post-action updates that often provide little supervisory or analytical value, particularly for community-based lenders,” America’s Credit Unions said.
Its recommendations include:
- Raising the closed-end HMDA reporting threshold from 25 loans to at least 500 loans
- Eliminating or limiting free-form demographic text fields that create inconsistent data
- Scaling back discretionary data points added beyond statutory requirements
- Allowing reporting based on information known at the time action is taken, without mandatory post-closing revisions
The full text of the letter can be found here: CL – CFPB – OMB Request – HMDA_final.pdf
Supporting Updates to Supervisory Committee Audits (NCUA)
America’s Credit Unions also file a comment letter with NCUA supporting its proposed updates to Part 715 governing supervisory committee audits and verifications.
America’s CUs said it supports “NCUA’s common-sense effort to modernize these rules by removing overly prescriptive and outdated provisions while preserving strong oversight and audit integrity,” and that it further backs updates that allow credit unions and auditors to “rely on current, industry-accepted frameworks and that better reflect how audits and internal controls operate today.”
The letter can be found here: CL – NCUA – Supervisory Committee Audits and Verification – NPRM_final.pdf
