WASHINGTON—Wally Murray, CEO of Greater Nevada Credit Union and chair of the Nevada CU League, told the Senate Banking Committee that “multiple statutory and regulatory barriers” are keeping credit unions from more fully serving members.
Murray called on Congress to help reduce those barriers.
“Since the beginning of the financial crisis, credit unions have been subjected to more than 190 regulatory changes from nearly three-dozen Federal agencies totaling nearly 6,000 pages,” said Murray, who was testifying on behalf of CUNA. “These new rules – usually aimed at curtailing practices that we don’t engage in – impact us because we have to” take time to determine how to comply, change internal policies, design new forms and retrain staff.
Murray shared with the senators that CUNA has embarked on a study to measure the cost and impact of the regulatory burden in order to better illustrate the cost it represents.
"Policymakers universally say, ‘credit unions and community banks didn’t cause the problem,’ but you wouldn’t know that based on the hundreds of rules to which we have been subjected since the crisis,” said Murray. “If you truly believe we are not the problem, please work with us to remove the barriers that keep us from serving our members – your constituents – even better.”
Murray’s written testimony included more than two-dozen recommendations for statutory changes.