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ICYMI: NAFCU details critical, growing role of CUs in annual report
Following its annual meeting with the Federal Reserve, NAFCU released its 2020 NAFCU Report on Credit Unions – now available online – detailing the critical and growing role credit unions play in their local communities. Members of the association's Board of Directors Tuesday shared insights from the report during a virtual meeting with Federal Reserve Board Governor Michelle Bowman.
“The coronavirus pandemic posed many challenges for our nation,” said NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger. “The 2020 NAFCU Report on Credit Unions shows how credit unions proactively and successfully adjusted their daily operations to help Americans nationwide, including many low- and moderate-income communities.
“As credit unions continue to help our economy recover and families make ends meet amid the pandemic, regulatory and compliance burdens still weigh heavily on their ability to serve members," Berger added. "The report details the importance for policymakers to ease regulatory burdens on credit unions as they continue to put the financial well-being of their members well ahead of their own profits.”
Through the report, NAFCU details four key credit union areas, including trends, service offerings, policy priorities, and the industry's strong response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Some highlights include:
- credit unions are 10 times more likely than banks to have a female CEO and among minority depository institutions (MDIs) there are over three times as many credit unions as banks;
- mortgage data indicate that credit union loans carry lower costs and lower rates than those of other lenders;
- the growth of credit union branches, particularly in rural areas, provides an important counterbalance to the current erosion of bank branch networks;
- credit unions provide over $16 billion annually in benefits to the economy;
- further refinements, such as lengthening the exam cycle, would make the NCUA's examination process less burdensome for credit unions;
- credit unions continue to labor under immense regulatory burden in the post Dodd-Frank era, with the number of employees devoted to regulatory compliance more than doubling since 2010;
- credit unions have been successfully adjusting their operations during the coronavirus pandemic: Working diligently to meet their members' needs, adding staff to call centers, extending loan forbearance, and more.
The report also highlights NAFCU's policy priorities in relation to its findings and includes priorities for a healthy regulatory environment in which credit unions can grow and thrive.
The information compiled in the 2020 NAFCU Report on Credit Unions is based on the association's Federal Reserve Meeting Survey, an annual assessment of NAFCU members covering topics discussed in the report. The report also draws on data collected for NAFCU's Economic & CU Monitor and CU Industry Trends Report.