In an American Banker op-ed today, former National Credit Union Administration Chairman Mark McWatters expressed concern that the agency has become “inappropriately emboldened” and said that “the agency may have abandoned . . . its congressional mandate to stay clearly within the four corners of the Federal Credit Union Act.”
McWatters—who resigned from the NCUA board in November 2020 and served as chairman from 2017 to 2019—raised concerns about several recent actions by the credit union regulator that he said he “could not have supported.” These actions include recent rules on overdraft protections and mortgage servicing rights and shared facility requirements, as well as the 2021-2022 budget, which he said raised consumer protection issues and undermined the agency’s obligation to ensure safety and soundness.
He added that “failure to approve a simple and elegant credit union leverage ratio rule, based upon the community bank leverage ratio rule authorized in S. 2155, appears myopic while needlessly delaying the board’s statutory duty to enact a sensible, tailored and targeted risk-based net worth rule for complex credit unions.”
