WASHINGTON–In response to a question posed in the title of a congressional hearing yesterday– “The Dodd-Frank Act Five Years Later: Are We More Stable?” NAFCU says the answer is clearly “no.”
In conjunction with the hearing, NAFCU told members of the House Financial Services Committee that Dodd-Frank and all the other regulations have clearly taken a toll on credit unions.
NAFCU’s General Counsel, Carrie Hunt, said in a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and Ranking Member Maxine Waters that despite credit unions’ “long track record of helping the economy grow and making loans when other lenders have left various markets,” the “increasing complexity of the regulatory environment, post Dodd-Frank, is taking a toll on the credit union industry."
"The impact of this growing compliance burden is evident as the number of credit unions continues to decline,” Hunt said in the letter. “Since the second quarter of 2010, we have lost 1,250 federally-insured credit unions – over 17% of the industry…Five years after the Dodd-Frank Act, one thing is clear: credit unions need meaningful regulatory relief, both from Congress and their regulators. While the creation of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) in Dodd-Frank was supposed to help regulator coordination on rulemakings to reduce burdens, such coordination appears to be lacking, especially between NCUA and the CFPB. More needs to be done."