In a comment letter to the National Credit Union Administration today, ABA expressed support for NCUA’s effort to review and update two of its primary data collection vehicles. The association said that more transparency and granularity in the NCUA’s data collection processes would allow for more robust comparisons in institution and industry trends.
ABA called on NCUA to focus specifically on its reporting of branch office deposit information, pointing out that currently, all financial services businesses except credit unions are required to report that information. Providing deposit data would help regulators, local governments and others assess the stability of deposit resources within a community.
The association also urged NCUA to improve its processes for collecting and reporting data to ensure that credit unions are living up to their responsibility to serve people of modest means. ABA cited a 2006 study by the Government Accountability Office that found that credit unions were more likely to serve middle-to-upper-income individuals, and added that better reporting would allow credit unions to be held accountable by the public and regulators to fulfill their CRA obligations. For more information, contact ABA’s Brittany Kleinpaste.