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As of February 4, NCUA reported that 1,258 new common bond groups have been added to multiple group CUs under IRPS 99-1 so far this year. The groups add up to a potential new membership of 120,149, with the average group size being 96. The numbers represented 297 new common bond groups added in the last week for a potential new membership of 30,234.
Since January 1 there have been 12 applications denied and 137 applications deferred. There have not been any applications denied for groups over 3,000 potential members. There were, however, three applications deferred for groups over 3,000 potential members. The greatest number of applications approved in 2000 (1,258) were for groups of under 200 potential members.
If the approval trend continues throughout the year, NCUA will approve just under what it did in 1999 (16,290 groups for 1.54 million potential membership).
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Newly arrived NAFCU President Fred Becker, Jr., who has been kept under wraps by staff during an initial orientation period on board the 1,000-member trade association, was set to meet with reporters at a NAFCU-sponsored press breakfast on Valentine's Day, February 14, at the National Press Club here.
"The whole purpose of the event is for him to meet you (folks) in the press," said NAFCU Public Relations Manager John Zimmerman, who added there would be no other agenda for the meeting.
Becker, who reportedly is shaking things up at NAFCU with his energetic ways and long working hours, has recently completed a round of meetings and interviews with members of Congress and NCUA.
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Navy FCU Executive V.P. of Mortgage Operations Louis Jennings has been named as an advisor to Fannie Mae's National Advisory Council. The 41-person council, according to Navy FCU, is a "forum that brings together leaders from segments of the housing and mortgage finance system and government to address the challenges and opportunities facing Fannie Mae and the nation's housing finance system."
Jennings has been with Navy FCU since 1984.
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In a press release dated February 8, America's Community Bankers (ACB), the trade association for many of the nation's smaller community banks and savings and loan institutions, complained that the Clinton Administration's $1.8 trillion FY 2001 budget again makes no provision for taxing credit unions.
Noting that the new budget projects a revenue "loss" due to the CU tax exemption of $9.48 billion over the next five years-or more than double the five-year revenue "loss" estimated in 1997-ACB said that it is not suggesting that "small credit unions with true common bonds" pay taxes. It only wants the overlarge "corporate conglomerate" CUs, "offering a full range of financial products over a broad geographic area," to pony up.
In making its point the ACB bemoaned the fact that one member, a for-profit but "cooperative" mutual savings bank with $109 million in assets, recently had to pay more than $400,000 in federal taxes while "the entire credit union industry combined paid zero federal taxes." -
gmcorrigan@mindspring.com
