It is always unfortunate when a well-informed public official fails to use the bully pulpit to shape opinion in a positive way. That was the case in the Credit Union Times (March 1, 2000) article "Privacy for sale" by Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA), a leading advocate of even more restrictive financial privacy laws.
To read the Congressman's piece, the landmark privacy provisions contained in S. 900, last year's financial modernization legislation, never happened. New and very real prohibitions on account information sharing with third parties are dismissed as non-existent. Repetitive, costly and burdensome disclosures are going to negatively affect the ability of some smaller credit unions to serve, and are unfortunately ignored by the article. Instead, Congressman Markey says, "Congress failed to step up to its responsibility to modernize consumer privacy protection laws." That's going to seem like a strange statement to credit unions when we find out about all of the fresh regulations that are now imposed by the financial modernization law.
Credit unions have been, and will continue to be, protective of our members' personal information. At the same time, credit unions need to share information with third parties, in order to provide the services that members expect, such as credit cards, ATM networks and other basic account functions. Credit unions will do a good job on privacy, not thanks to congressional fiat, but rather due to the ethical and sound business practices inherent in solid member service.
Last year, CUNA successfully lobbied Congress to make the new privacy provisions more livable for credit unions. Now, the focus shifts to the regulatory front. As Chairman of CUNA's Consumer Protection Subcommittee, I take a great deal of pride in the work that we are doing to interpret the complex, 91-page privacy regulation that resulted from last year's so-called non-event on Capitol Hill. CUNA has issued a model privacy policy to every credit union in the country, and will continue to inform and guide credit unions through a financial privacy maze that only promises to become more confusing. I respectfully ask Congress: Please do not saddle credit unions with any more restrictions before we implement the ones you just gave us. Kris J. Mecham President & CEO Deseret First Credit Union
