According to Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, “Starbucksrepresents something beyond a cup of coffee.”

Likewise, we believe credit unions represent more than justanother financial institution. Credit unions help to makedreams a reality, whether that is a new home, a new car or growinga business. We believe our commitment to provide our creditunion members with the very best in federal advocacy, education andcompliance assistance can help credit unions thrive so they canfocus on fulfilling their members’ financial needs.

This year, our steadfast advocacy efforts before Congress,regulators and the administration, as well as our new onlinetraining and compliance resources, boosted the industry as well asthe association. NAFCU’s membership voted to grantfederally-insured, state-chartered credit unions full membership inthe association was a major milestone. This action bolstered theassociation’s objective of advancing all federally-insured creditunions.

While preserving credit unions’ tax exemption continues to beour top legislative priority, here are some highlights of ourrecent efforts.

Advocacy

Based on NAFCU’s and its members’ efforts, a bipartisan majorityof members from both the House and Senate wrote CFPB Director Richard Cordray and urged him to domore to provide regulatory relief to credit unions via the bureau’sDodd-Frank Act authority. The House Appropriations Committee, inits own report accompanying the financial services spending bill,also addressed this issue and the need for credit union relief fromthe Federal Communications Commission’s auto-dialing order underthe Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling(R-Texas) also unveiled the Financial Creating Hope and Opportunityfor Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs (CHOICE) Act (H.R.5983). It is a comprehensive regulatory relief bill with a numberof NAFCU-backed measures. The legislation passed the committee inSeptember.

NAFCU has also fought particularly hard to repeal the Durbinamendment on interchange. This year, Rep. Randy Neugebauer(R-Texas) introduced NAFCU-backed legislation (H.R. 5465) to repealthe Durbin amendment on interchange. That legislative language wassubsequently incorporated into the Financial CHOICE Act (H.R.5983). The association will continue its efforts with the newCongress in January.

On the regulatory front, we saw some significant progress withthe NCUA. We continued to advocate for greater transparency in theNCUA’s budget process. At NAFCU’s 49th Annual Conference in June,NCUA Board Chairman Rick Metsger announced that the agency wasreturning to the practice of holding public budget briefings forthe industry. As I pointed out in my comments during the agency’sOctober briefing, the NCUA’s ever-increasing budget and the pace ofgrowth was unjustified. I urged the agency to find costsavings wherever possible.

In addition, the NCUA finalized its member-business lending rulethis year, eliminating credit unions’ personal guaranteerequirement and, effective Jan. 1, eliminating the waiver process.NAFCU praised the rule, which eases the regulatory burden on creditunions and allows them the independence to safely and soundlyaddress the needs of their small business members.

We also announced a joint effort with CUNA to challenge a lawsuit filedthis October by the Independent Community Bankers of Americaagainst the NCUA over its member business lending rule.

In October, the NCUA board finalized its field of membershiprule and issued a new proposal raising to 10 million the populationcap for well-defined communities. The rule also allows creditunions seeking community charter expansions to present a narrativeas to why certain areas would qualify for inclusion.

NAFCU will continue to push the NCUA to provide credit unionswith more FOM relief. This would include the elimination orincrease of core-based statistical area population limits, thecreation of a formal notification process for credit unionFOM-related applications and the streamlining of the mergerauthorization process.

On the legislative side, NAFCU backed the Financial Services forthe Underserved Act of 2016 (H.R. 5541). The legislation would giveindividuals living in underserved and low-income communitiesexpanded access to federal credit unions. The bill was introducedthis summer by Reps. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and Donald Norcross(D-N.J.). NAFCU will continue to press this issue next year.

The NCUA also announced its efforts to modernize the examinationand supervision program, including the call report system. The NCUAsaid it hopes to strengthen its onsite examination and off-sitemonitoring, facilitate better industry trends and comparisonsbetween institutions and minimize the reporting burden onfederally-insured credit unions. NAFCU has written the agency withrecommendations of how the program can be improved for creditunions.

In addition, the NCUA announced in October that well-run,healthy credit unions with assets of less than $1 billion could bemoved to an extended examination cycle beginning next year. NAFCUcontinues to press for such relief for all well-run creditunions.

Our advocacy was not limited to our industry. When the newsof the Wells Fargo scandal broke, we were quick to champion the credit union difference and continued to make thedistinction as the issue developed.

Education and Compliance Assistance

In our constantly evolving regulatory environment, there alwaysseems to be something new to be learned. This year, NAFCU addedseveral new compliance offerings to its lineup. They included aBank Secrecy Act Seminar;an onlinetraining subscription that covers the 10 most challengingcompliance topics, including BSA, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act,data security and more; and a complimentary mortgage symposium,which was held in conjunction with NAFCU’s Annual Conference.

Additionally, NAFCU’s compliance team published a MilitaryLending Act Guide to provide members with analysis of theDepartment of Defense’s rule, which went into effect Oct. 3. Theteam also created a user-friendly,interactive workbook for credit unions using the FFIEC’scybersecurity assessment tool.

NAFCU launched a revised Board ofDirectors Online Training Subscription. It now contains newmodules and exams board members can complete to become NAFCU CertifiedVolunteer Experts. The 11 new modules within the trainingsubscription are designed and delivered by NAFCU EVP and COOAnthony Demangone.

Conclusion

While 2016 was a year of remarkable progress, our work is notdone yet. We want to continue to advance the credit uniondifference and ensure everyone knows credit unions are unique andnot like any other financial institution.

We look forward to working with the incoming administration andnew members of the 115th Congress. I am honored and humbled to beleading this extraordinary organization into our 50th anniversary.I am thrilled at the possibilities of more outstanding achievementswith your continued help in our golden year. We could not havereached this milestone without credit unions’ exemplary standard ofexcellence and continued focus on credit union members’ bestinterest. Thank you for your exceptional contribution to oursuccess. With your support, we are poised for greataccomplishments in 2017!

B. Dan Berger is president/CEO of NAFCU. He can be reachedat 703-522-4770 or [email protected].