The banking industry has been subjected to significant forces over the past year – high inflation, interest rate volatility, lingering effects of the pandemic, events in the crypto asset markets and continual beats of a recession on the horizon. If that was not enough, credit unions are facing heightened and burdensome regulations this year:

• Section 1071, which recently came into effect on March 31, will require financial institutions to collect and report data on lending to small businesses, with a particular emphasis on data related to race, ethnicity and gender. Credit unions will need to ensure that they have systems in place to collect the required data accurately and securely, as well as to report it to regulators in a timely manner.
• Secure Act 2.0, signed into law in December 2022, brought significant changes to retirement savings rules in the United States. One provision will increase the age (from 72 to 73) at which individuals must take required minimum distributions (RMDs) from their retirement accounts. Credit unions should review their current retirement plan options and educate their staff and communicate the changes to members.
• The CFPB is cracking down on overdraft fees this year, shifting responsibility onto financial institutions. Credit unions should review their policies and procedures for assessing member eligibility for overdraft protection and charging fees, and ensure that they are providing clear and transparent disclosures to their members about the fees associated with overdraft protection.

The ever-evolving compliance landscape makes it nearly impossible for credit unions to keep pace. Many successful credit unions are responding by building a partner ecosystem with strategic fintechs that can help them stay up to date with changes and regulations, and explore how they can meet the new "digital consumer" on their device of choice. Partnering with a strong fintech provider opens up plenty of opportunities for credit unions to continually innovate and serve their members and community.

Historically, credit unions have approached compliance with manual processes that were time consuming, complex and often redundant. For instance, reading though legal reviews and policies, updating consumer documents to match members' appropriate state regulations and keeping up with the evolving landscape, external threats and new rules is often all done manually. According to Thomson Reuters, the number of regulatory changes a financial institution must deal with every day has increased from 10 in 2004 to nearly 200 today. That's one change every 12 minutes. Credit unions using manual processes to interpret each change simply cannot keep up.