WASHINGTON — The furor over the Treasury's Blueprint proposal for financial reorganization highlights a glaring fact about credit union charters: no one wants one, according Washington CU attorney Bruce Jolly.
"It's a lot more difficult to argue for a separate agency when no one is beating your door to come in," said Jolly, a former NCUA counsel commenting on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's single charter plan.
Jolly, currently a partner at Venable LLC, said he found irony in the discussion about future credit union charters and a single regulatory agency while over the last year "there were 100 bank charters granted but only a handful of credit union charters."
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Since late last year, Jolly has been advising a New York police group about starting a broad-based and multi-service Manhattan CU to serve law enforcement.
In chartering a new CU, Jolly said the industry's predicament becomes apparent considering there are so few applications for new CUs.
Yet, he said, the national CU leadership can move ahead with sparking public and business interest in supporting CUs if newly formed institutions like his own provide a mix of valued deposit and loan services that members truly want.
Too often, the new CU is short-changed by making the charter less than attractive, he said.
"NCUA," he stressed, "understands the importance of this issue and has been very supportive of our efforts," citing the application now pending for The Finest Federal CU, New York, serving patrolmen and law enforcement.
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