The good news revealed in CUNA's inaugural national exam surveyresults is that the NCUA is already addressing key findings such asthe overuse of Documents of Resolutions and examiners pressuring credit unionsto follow guidance and best practices as if they wereregulations.

The bad news is that 25% of responding CEOs said they weredissatisfied with their most recent exam, a number CUNA ChiefEconomist Bill Hampel said has room for improvement.

“The rate of dissatisfaction is never going to be zero,” saidCUNA Chief Economist Bill Hampel, “but it would be nice to move inthat direction

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The exam survey, modeled after a programlaunched by the New Jersey Credit UnionLeague in 2012 that targeted all credit unions in Region II, aimsto provide CUNA with national baseline figures from which to gaugefuture trends in federal and state exam processes. CUNA debuted theexam results at its Governmental Affairs Conference Monday inWashington.

The online survey, managed by CUNA and the leagues, wasconducted in December 2012 and January 2013, and generated aresponse rate of approximately 25%, or about 1,500 responses, thetrade group said.

Overall, 60% of credit union CEOs surveyed said they weresatisfied with their exams compared to the dissatisfaction rate of25%. Credit unions that reported being dissatisfied with theirexams were more likely to be state-chartered credit unions withmore than $250 million in assets, and therefore subjected to jointexams. Dissatisfied credit unions also tended to beundercapitalized, with net worth ratios between 5% and 6%, and sawtheir examiner assign a riskier CAMEL rating after the exam.

The survey also revealed that 43% of respondents received one ormore DORs during their last exam. CUNA Deputy General Counsel MaryDunn said the ability to quantify the use of DORs will be helpfulas her trade works with the NCUA to reduce the use of the document.Previously, Dunn said, CUNA was only able to provide anecdotalfeedback to the regulator on the issue.

“The biggest weakness in any advocacy program is a lack ofactual information and hard fast data that substantiates yourclaim,” she said.” This allows us to sit down with regulators andshow them what the data indicates, that there are too many DORs outthere.”

Paul Gentile, CUNA's executive vice president of strategiccommunications and engagement, agreed with Dunn. He said helaunched the survey in New Jersey last year as president of theNJCUL because “credit unions are very vocal about exams that don'tgo well, which is good, but the problem when advocating for creditunions is those are one-off stories.”

After presenting NCUA Director of Examination and InsuranceLarryFazio with the Region II findings last year, Gentile said hewas “very pleasantly surprised” with the regulator's response. Examscheduling problems with New Jersey credit unions were revealed inthat survey, and Gentile said the NCUA has already remedied theproblem.

The NCUA said it had not yet reviewed the survey results and hadno comment.