Corporate credit unions going forward should have only one tier, offer a more limited set of products and services than they do now and have their membership limited to natural person credit unions that acquire tier one capital based on asset size.

These are among the recommendations offered by CUNA and NAFCU's Corporate Credit Union Restructure Policy Task Force today. The Task Force urged the agency to take up all the recommendations, saying at one point that failure to do so would likely result in a corporate credit union structure that natural person credit unions would not accept.

"The Task Force stresses that the recommendations it presents are to be taken as an integrated set. Selecting the Task Force's suggested direction in some areas while not in others will likely not lead to a corporate design that will be acceptable to NPCUs," the report said, adding in the conclusion.

The Task Force acknowledged that its plan would represent a "substantial departure" from the current structure and also noted that the report did not cover how the system would move from the old structure to the new, if NCUA accepted its recommendations.

"Not covered in this report are the crucial questions of the transition from the current system to the new one. That transition will need to be handled in manner that both preserves the valuable payments and data switch abilities of the current system and manages the wind-down of the troubled investment portfolios of some corporate credit unions in a way that minimizes future costs to credit unions," the report said.