NCUA gives 45 days more for FOM comments

Feb. 5, 2010 – NCUA has set April 15 as the new deadline for comments on the agency’s proposed Interpretive Ruling and Policy Statement 09-1 on community chartering and field of membership.

NAFCU has also extended to Feb. 19 the deadline for members’ input to the association’s official comment.

NCUA said the extension – 45 days past the original March 1 deadline – is to give credit unions some breathing room since the corporate credit union proposal comment period ends shortly after that, on March 9.

The chartering and FOM proposal was released in December. It would streamline the community charter application process, define what is a rural district, clarify NCUA’s marketing plan requirements for credit unions converting to or expanding their community charters and define the term “in danger of insolvency” for emergency merger purposes.

Regarding community charter requests, the proposed IRPS 09-1 would continue to treat a single political jurisdiction as a well-defined local community. Otherwise, the following criteria also apply:

• The area must be recognized as a core base statistical area. In the case of a CBSA with metropolitan divisions, it must be recognized as a single metropolitan division.
  
  
• It must have a dominant city, county or equivalent with a majority of all jobs in the CBSA or in the metropolitan division.
  
  
• The dominant city, county or equivalent must contain at least one-third of the CBSA or metropolitan division’s total population.
  
  
• The area population may not exceed 2.5 million.

NAFCU published a Regulatory Alert on the proposed rule. To download, follow the link below.