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Ahead of the House's vote on its version of the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), NAFCU’s award-winning advocacy team continues to urge against the inclusion of a provision requiring the Department of Defense (DoD) to treat banks the same as credit unions when it comes to nominal leases on military bases. In addition, the association successfully advocated for inclusion on an amendment to the NDAA to provide needed reforms to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws. 

Prior to the House voting last evening to add the BSA/AML amendment to the NDAA, the association wrote to the full House on these issues and also joined with other trade associations to voice its support for the addition of the bipartisan COUNTER Act and Corporate Transparency Act – which includes BSA/AML reforms and creates a beneficial ownership registry – as an amendment to the final version of the NDAA. 

In the association’s letter, NAFCU Vice President of Legislative Affairs Brad Thaler shared with House leadership NAFCU’s concerns about the nominal lease provision found in the Senate version of the bill, urging against support of the lease provision when the legislation goes to a conference committee.

“The Senate’s version of the FY2021 NDAA currently includes a provision that would require the DoD to treat large mega-banks, such as Wells Fargo, the same as a military installation’s local not-for-profit defense credit union when it comes to rent on military bases,” wrote Thaler in the letter. “We thank the House for not including a similar provision, and we urge you to reject this provision when the legislation goes to conference.

“While we recognize the important role both credit unions and banks can play for our men and women in the military in the provision of traditional financial services, the fact remains that banks and credit unions are fundamentally different. For-profit banks ultimately focus on benefitting shareholders while credit unions focus on serving their member-owners,” added Thaler.

In the letter, Thaler also noted that the inclusion of the  NAFCU-backed COUNTER Act and Corporate Transparency Act as an amendment to the defense bill would “make critical modernizations and improvements to our BSA/AML system.”

Relatedly, NAFCU joined with nine trade organizations yesterday in a letter to the House Armed Services Committee encouraging leaders of both parties to support the amendment.  After NAFCU’s advocacy on the issue, the BSA/AML and beneficial ownership amendment was successfully added to the NDAA last evening when the House voted to add a series of pending amendments to the bill.

BSA/AML reform is one of the association's advocacy priorities for 2020, and NAFCU previously urged the Senate to advance BSA/AML legislation as the House last year passed NAFCU-supported legislation to reduce the burden of suspicious activity report (SAR) and currency transaction report (CTR) filings.

As proposed, the bill would require the Treasury Department to evaluate the usefulness of CTR and SAR filings and review whether filing thresholds for these reports need to be updated.

In addition, the legislation would require companies to disclose their true beneficial ownership information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in efforts to create a nonpublic database of beneficial ownership information.

The association will remain engaged with both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees as the FY2021 NDAA bills move through the chambers and to a conference committee to ensure this provision is not included in the final version.