Newsroom

September 16, 2014

McFadden on reg burden: 'Enough is enough'

NAFCU witness Linda McFadden, president and CEO of XCEL Federal Credit Union in Bloomfield, N.J., will tell the Senate Banking Committee today why "enough is enough" in response to the ongoing overregulation of the nation's credit unions.

McFadden is set to testify during today's committee hearing, "Examining the State of Small Depository Institutions." She will discuss the exponential growth of new rules under the Dodd-Frank Act and the proposals NAFCU is supporting to provide credit unions relief.

In her prepared testimony, McFadden notes that 1,025 federally insured credit unions have gone out of existence since the second quarter of 2010, when Dodd-Frank was enacted. Of those, 96 percent were smaller institutions having less than $100 million in assets.

She will urge regulatory relief and seek a slowing in growth of new regulatory burden, such as NCUA's "one size fits all" risk-based capital proposal, which NAFCU has described as a solution in search of a problem. McFadden says the current proposal would take XCEL FCU "from a well-capitalized credit union to adequately capitalized" and, in turn, "restrict XCEL from implementing products and programs which are needed to compete in the financial industry."

She will support a requirement that NCUA "stop and study" its RBC proposal to determine the impact on credit unions and allow time for Congress to legislate in this area.

McFadden will also urge support for the following:

  • S. 635, the Privacy Notice Modernization Act, to give relief from a statutory requirement to mail annual private notices, even when privacy policies do not change;
  • S. 727, the Financial Institutions Examination Fairness and Reform Act;
  • S. 2698, the RELIEVE Act, to establish parity in NCUA and FDIC coverage of Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (and S. 2699);
  • S. 1577, the Mortgage Choice Act of 2013, excluding affiliate title charges from "points and fees" for qualified mortgages;
  • S. 968, the Small Business Lending Enhancement Act, to raise the credit union member business lending cap from 12.25 percent of assets to 27.5 percent, and make other changes.

Today's hearing, set for 10 a.m., begins with a panel of federal regulator agency witnesses, including NCUA Examination and Insurance Director Larry Fazio and others from FDIC, the Federal Reserve and others. McFadden will testify alongside other witnesses from the credit union and banking industries.