A new report from the NCUA's Office of the Inspector General says the agency should “improve its process of documenting specific credit union failure data and related estimated share insurance fund losses.”

“We determined NCUA's regional offices and Asset Management and Assistance Center documented different estimated SIF loss amounts at different times that were ultimately used by E&I (Examination and Insurance) to update the Reserve Needs Report,” said the report released last week.

The OIG's review included the period from Jan. 1, 2012 through July 31, 2012 when the NCUA supervised the closure of 12 credit unions that caused a loss to the SIF.

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The OIG found that the regional offices, AMAC and E&I reported “different estimated SIF loss amounts at the time of failure for all six purchase and assumption agreements that occurred during the first seven months of 2012.”

For this period, loss to the SIF from the failure of the $318 million Telesis Community CU in Chatsworth, Calif., was estimated to be $254.6 million but the actual amount totaled $72.3 million, the report found.

The $51.8 million Eastern New York FCU in Napanoch, N.Y., was projected to cause a $2.6 million loss but the actual amount was $3.6 million.

The NCUA also supervised the closure of 17 credit unions that caused a loss to the SIF in 2011. The OIG review showed that the projected loss from the $52 million BCT FCU in Montrose, Pa., was $431,000 but the actual amount totaled $6.1 million.

The $157 million Utah Central CU in Salt Lake City was projected at $500,000 in losses but the actual losses were $1.7 million. The amount of SIF losses and gains were reported by regional offices, AMAC and E&I.

The OIG report suggested that the NCUA “formalize and update existing internal procedures used for maintaining the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund's reserves to ensure procedures reflect current practices for recording estimated …loss amounts, the yearly number and dates of credit union failures; and the systems used to record these events.”

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The review also found that the credit union failure dates reported to the OIG by each of the NCUA offices “varied significantly.”

To prevent this issue from occurring again, OIG recommended the NCUA “develop an agency-wide definition for the term 'failure date' for both federally and state-chartered credit union involuntary liquidations, purchase and assumptions, and assisted mergers.”

This action would “ensure agency-wide consistency when reporting on when a credit union is actually considered to have failed,” the report said.

Instant Insights /

NCUA OIG Calls for Improving SIF Loss Data

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