ARLINGTON, Va.—NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger has sent a letter to Congress supporting the idea of giving regulators the power to exempt community financial institutions from existing and new regulations, a concept advanced by former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair.
The letter was sent Tuesday to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby and Ranking Member Sherrod Brown and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and Ranking Member Maxine Waters. Members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives were copied.
Berger stated that “Congress enacting a provision giving regulators the flexibility to exempt all credit unions from new and existing regulations could provide meaningful regulatory relief for the credit union industry. NAFCU could also support providing this exemption relief to community banks, while still maintaining the necessary regulatory requirements for larger ‘too-big-to-fail’ institutions.”
Berger noted that such authority is not “unprecedented, as Section 1022 of the Dodd-Frank Act already grants the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) the authority to provide exemptions from various rulemakings. NAFCU, however, believes that the CFPB has failed to utilize this authority to provide meaningful exemptions for credit unions from new regulatory burdens. NAFCU hopes that enacting a broader exemption authority would encourage the CFPB, and allow other financial regulators to provide greater relief for community financial institutions.”