Oct. 12, 2012 – NAFCU’s efforts to press lawmakers to act on regulatory relief measures for credit unions were highlighted in an Oct. 10 House Financial Services Committee blog post that included a portion of NAFCU Vice Chair Ed Templeton’s congressional testimony from May.
The blog post, titled "We Listened: What Small Banks and Small Businesses Are Saying About the Dodd-Frank Act," outlines the committee’s efforts to hear from financial institutions about the impact of the historic law. It includes comments from 20 different financial institution executives, including Templeton, president and CEO of SRP FCU, and Maria Martinez, president and CEO of Border FCU.
Using testimony from his May 9 appearance before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit on May 9, Templeton is quoted as saying that “the greatest challenge facing many credit unions” is not any single specific regulation, but rather the “cumulative impact of the rapidly growing number of regulatory burdens in the wake of the financial crisis.”
The blog also includes the part of Templeton’s testimony where he says that NAFCU is continuing to “urge the Committee to move forward with legislation that will provide regulatory relief from outdated laws and regulations for credit unions.”
For her part, Martinez notes that she has spent “many hours reading each new law and regulation,” because she “can’t afford to hire lawyers to interpret them for me.”
Martinez’s testimony points out that the majority of these laws and regulations were “created to address a problem caused by organizations other than credit unions.” The end result, she says, is that small credit unions must comply with the same requirements as the largest financial institutions in the U.S.
The blog post notes that the House Financial Services Committee has held 62 hearings on the Dodd-Frank Act and received testimony from more than 300 witnesses since Republicans took control in January 2011.