Both chambers of Congress returned to Washington, D.C., after the Labor Day holiday, and work commenced quickly to pursue multiple issues of interest to credit unions, including financial hearings, multiple states traveling to D.C. for Hike the Hills, pursing changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and issues surrounding NCUA. Highlights:
- CUNA, Leagues and credit unions, along with banking trade associations, wrote Senate leadership on September 11th to urge their support of a repeal of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) arbitration rule. The House passed its resolution to repeal the rule in July. The CFPB’s rule would restrict the use of arbitration clauses. It also requires companies to submit to the CFPB certain records about claims, counterclaims and awards issued in arbitration.
- Credit unions have also been paying close attention to the appropriations legislation, a large bill that includes eight appropriations, including the financial services and general government (FSGG) appropriations bill. This encompassed sections that matter to credit unions: funding levels for [Treasury’s] community Development Financial Institutions Fund, [NCUA’s] Community Development Revolving Loan Fund, regulatory relief provisions included in committee’s markup of FSGG and then the CUNA-opposed language that would subject NCUA to appropriations. This opposed language was removed from the bill on September 13th due to the efforts of credit unions, Leagues and CUNA educating legislators on why it should not be included.
- CUNA was watching multiple hearings from the financial committees, including a House Financial Services subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer credit hearing on September 13th. This hearing presented the opportunity to highlight the need for common sense regulatory relief for the industry to promote several credit union supported pieces of legislation.
And in what is a significant victory for credit union advocacy efforts on regulatory relief, two-thirds of all credit unions that would have been subject to home equity line of credit reporting under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) will be exempted. The CFPB published its final rule in the Federal Register on September 12th. The increased threshold applies to credit uniom originating 500 or fewer home equity lines of credit through calendar years 2018 and 2019. The previous threshold was 100. This is a temporary increase so the CFPB can consider whether to permanently adjust the threshold for data collected beginning Jan. 1, 2020.
