WASHINGTON–The Independent Community Bankers of America has joined with the American Bankers Association and the Appraisal Institute in blasting NCUA for making changes in its rules for appraisal thresholds.
Rebeca Romero Rainey
As CUToday.info reported here, the NCUA board at its meeting last week voted 2-1 to amend its rules around real estate appraisals, including increasing the threshold below which appraisals are not required for commercial real estate transactions from $250,000 to $1,000,000.
In response, ICBA President Rebecca Romero Rainey issued a statement saying, “ICBA strongly opposes the National Credit Union Administration's final rule that quadruples the threshold at which credit union commercial real estate transactions are exempt from appraisals. By increasing the appraisal threshold for tax-exempt credit unions from $250,000 to $1 million, this captive regulator has doubled the banking industry’s $500,000 CRE threshold—once again pushing the envelope to benefit the industry it is charged with regulating.
‘Credit Union Abuses’
“The 2-1 vote by the divided NCUA board is just the latest example of the NCUA acting as an advocate for tax-exempt credit unions,” Romero Rainey continued. “The NCUA has advanced a series of rules expanding credit unions’ ability to dodge membership restrictions, make commercial loans, and leverage their tax subsidy to raise capital from outside investors. It also has established bureaucratic obstacles and roadblocks to credit union conversions and mergers that make it more difficult for a bank to acquire a credit union than vice versa.”
Romero Rainey also repeated calls the ICBA made earlier for Congress to investigate “credit union abuses,” including what it said was NCUA’s role in the “taxi medallion scandal.” She added work by its ICBA Credit Union Task Force will continue to “address the disturbing trend of large credit unions buying up smaller community banks. ICBA looks forward to continuing our long-standing call for policymakers to re-examine the credit union industry’s tax and regulatory subsidies to achieve equity between tax-exempt credit unions and taxpaying community banks.”