WASHINGTON — NCUA Board Chairman Debbie Matz shared her effortsto update and modernize the regulator Monday during her generalsession address at CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conference.

“Some risks are always there. Others arise with new realities.But either way, being the best of a time that's passed is not goodenough,” she said.

Matz said the NCUA has evolved in two primary areas: people andpolicies. Since 2009, 75% of the NCUA's offices have new directors, she said, and 40% of the regulator's examinershave been on the job less than five yea

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The chairman also touted the agency's recent regulatorymodernization initiatives, including a reallocation of examresources that streamline exams for small credit unions whilefocusing on larger credit unions that, by nature of their assetsize, could create larger losses for the share insurance fund inthe event of a failure.

The NCUA has also responded to today's environment by expandingthe range of video tellers, allowing larger fleets for memberbusiness loans, and extending permissible maturities for loanmodifications, Matz said.

And, she said, when the NCUA made public portions of its National Supervision Policy Manual,it became the only financial services regulator to release aninternal operations document.

“That's real transparency,” she said.

Matz said she also advocated for a proposed rule, currentlyunder development by NCUA staff, to allow credit unions to usederivatives to hedge against interest rate risk.

“As you know, derivatives can be extremely complex, and many canbe very risky. So it would be easy for us to 'just say no',” shesaid. “Instead, I told my staff, 'NCUA cannot hold credit unionsback'. We cannot say no to an activity or product like derivativessimply because we have not permitted it in the past.”