Although the funding process is nowhere near complete, it appears that fewer than 100 credit unions may wind up receiving any money from the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Community development credit unions as well as community development banks that the Treasury Department has recognized as Community Development Financial Institutions, were made eligible receive long term capital loans from TARP funds in a program called the Community Development Capital Initiative. Under the terms of the program, NCUA has to indicate to Treasury that the credit unions applying for the funds are "viable" and the agency requires applying credit unions to file secondary capital plans as part of their applications.
National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions CEO Cliff Rosenthal reported that, as of the May 10 deadline, the Federation knew of 111 CDCUs that had filed secondary capital plans as part of their CDCI applications. NCUA has already rejected a few, he said, and the agency has not yet commented on how many complete CDCI applications it received overall.
Rosenthal said that 142 credit unions took the first step of applying to the program, but that not all of them had filed secondary capital plans.
"Not all of our members applied to the program and not all of the applications came from our members, so we don't yet know exactly how many credit unions applied," he said. The NCUA has not yet identified how many CUs applied to the program or which ones.
Bill Luecht, spokesman for the Treasury's CDFI Fund, said his agency also did not know how many CUs completed CDCI applications, pointing out that the Fund had a formal role only in the very first step of the multistage application process.
