A final rule raising from $10 billion to $15 billion the asset-size threshold for credit unions subject to agency central office oversight was approved Thursday by the board of the federal credit union regulator.
This change, which will allow eight federally insured credit unions that rose to at least $10 billion in assets by March to remain under regional office supervision next year, was driven in large part by rapid growth in credit union assets since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) indicated Thursday.
“With the rapid balance sheet growth across the credit union system since the onset of the pandemic, especially for the largest of credit unions, recalibrating the threshold was always a question of when, not if,” according to a statement by NCUA Chairman Todd Harper. Harper called the board’s approval of the final rule “a significant acknowledgement of the industry’s ongoing maturation and the evolving role the NCUA plays in supervising and insuring our nation’s largest credit unions.”
The NCUA Office of National Examinations and Supervision (ONES) was established to oversee the largest and most complex credit unions in the credit union system, the agency said, including corporate credit unions. Supervision of natural person (consumer) federally insured credit unions (FICUs) with assets of $10 billion or more was transferred to this office in January 2014, it said, and each year after that FICUs newly reporting assets of $10 billion or more on March 31 of a given calendar year are reassigned to ONES on the first day of the following year.
The agency issued its proposal in February and received five comment letters, one of them from a credit union. The final rule takes effect Jan. 1, 2023.