ARLINGTON, Va. – After several months of work, NASCUS hascompleted the design of the data collection questionnaire it willuse to collect information from state regulators and, whereappropriate, state-chartered credit unions in response to therequest from the House Ways and Means Committee.

The online questionnaire includes a combination of yes/no andopen-ended questions that address the four areas the committeewants information on concerning the state-chartered credit unionsystem-membership, executive compensation, CUSOs and UnrelatedBusiness Income Tax.

NASCUS has been working with software developer PCi out ofBoston on the questionnaire development. Kate Hartig, director ofcommunications for NASCUS said PCi informed the association bothits Fair Lending Wiz and CRA Wiz program will give the necessaryinformation. She added that regulators in Connecticut andMassachusetts already have access to the latter software.

“When we formed our task force we wanted to come up with themost cost effective and least disruptive way for state agencies andcredit unions to collect the necessary information. We think thequestionnaire will take about an hour to complete,” said NASCUSPresident/CEO Mary Martha Fortney.

She added that the association “expects full participation fromthe state credit union system.” Initially there was uncertaintywhether all the state regulators would be able to participatebecause of confidentiality concerns since some state laws prohibitthe sharing of information. To address that, in those states wherethe agency cannot share the information, Fortney explained theirstate-chartered CUs will work with other state regulators toprovide the information. Fortney said a statistician will assist inderiving a representative sample of credit unions in thosestates.

The data collection is expected to start at the end ofAugust.

NASCUS has kept in close contact with the House Ways & MeansCommittee since April when it first received the letter fromcommittee Chairman Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) requesting the datacollection from state regulators on a representative sample ofcredit unions they regulate. The association has regularly apprisedthe committee of its progress as it's gone through theformalization of the project, and as recently as the week of July10 it gave them a formal status update.

All the collected data will be funneled to NASCUS, which isserving as a clearing house and is responsible for writing a reporton the data. Fortney said the report will be in an aggregate formof what the state credit union system looks like. However, sheadded, “if a regulator wants to add something about theirparticular state, they'll be able to file an addendum to thereport.”

She continued, “We'll have to help the committee understand thedual chartering system and the variances of the system. There'salways a need for reemphasis of the importance of the dualchartering system, a re-education with new staff and new members ofCongress. The audience is different.”

Fortney said she wasn't sure how long the collection will takeor how long NASCUS will need to complete the report, but theassociation let the committee know that NASCUS will not meet theSept. 1 deadline.

“We've been upfront with the committee, and I think theyrecognize the project as being ambitious. They understand whatwe're doing and appreciate that because we're doing arepresentative sample of credit unions that it's takinglonger.”

In related news, NASCUS met with GAO staff at the end of June todiscuss the data collection project. Fortney said the GAO wanted tounderstand the methodology the association was using since they'reinvolved with the federal credit union data collection project.Fortney said, “It was our opportunity to help GAO understand whatwe are doing.” -

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