Oregon House Bill 2346 – Proposed

The proposed House Bill, currently referred to public hearing, would require credit unions to accept a declaration or a affidavit from DHS or OHA to pay claims on the death of a credit union member. House Bill 2346 Introduced and printed pursuant to House Rule 12.00. Presession filed (at the request of Governor Kate Brown for Department of Human Services) … Read More

Bad Reviews? Let them stay.

Congress unanimously passed the Consumer Review Fairness Act to protect people’s ability to share in any forum their honest opinions about a business’ products, services, or conduct. Some companies had been using contract provisions – including their online terms and conditions – to threaten to sue consumers or penalize them financially for posting negative reviews or complaints. The new law … Read More

Compressed Version of the SDN.XML File Now Available

From the U.S. Department of the Treasury: 2/22/2017 OFAC is now offering a compressed version of its SDN.XML file in order to provide bandwidth savings for users that frequently download this file.  This new file compresses the SDN.XML file by approximately 92%. The new file can be found at the following URL: https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdn_xml.zip This file will be updated at the same time … Read More

Proposed SAR Changes

FinCEN has published a notice of proposed changes to the SAR form.  The notice does not propose any new regulatory requirements or changes to the requirements related to suspicious activity reporting other than changes to the data fields provided in the SAR filings.  Most of the proposed changes would alter the “checklist” of violations in Part II, including the addition … Read More

FDIC’s Money Smart Alliance Program

The FDIC provides a Money Smart Alliance program, which is a network for financial institutions, nonprofits, and governmental organizations that can use the FDIC’s financial education curriculum to provide training to consumers, small businesses and others. The Money Smart Alliance program is a comprehensive financial education curriculum designed to help low- and moderate-income individuals outside the financial mainstream enhance their … Read More

ANPR – Alternative Capital

The NCUA issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) regarding alternative capital for federally insured credits.  Credit unions could use the alternative capital to meet required capital standards. The ANPR divides alternative capital into two categories:  secondary capital and supplemental capital.  Currently, secondary capital is only allowed for low-income designated credit unions and is counted toward both the net … Read More

Contaminated Currency

From the Federal Reserve: January 30, 2017 In response to customer feedback, the Federal Reserve updated its procedures for submitting deposits of contaminated currency. The updated procedures are available on the Contaminated Currency and Coin page of FRBservices.org. In addition, the FedCash® Services Contaminated Currency Notification Form (CASH-04) and Deposit Visual Reference Guide were updated to reflect the changes. Effective … Read More

Interest Rate on Reserve Balance Requirements

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (“Board”) is amending Regulation D (Reserve Requirements of Depository Institutions) to revise the rate of interest paid on balances maintained to satisfy reserve balance requirements (“IORR”) and the rate of interest paid on excess balances (“IOER”) maintained at Federal Reserve Banks by or on behalf of eligible institutions. The final amendments … Read More

Proposed WA House Bill 1053 – Addressing the Washington State Credit Union Act

There is a current bill in committee (HB 1053 / SB 5144) that, if enacted would: Modify credit union governance provisions related to supervisory committees and special membership meetings, and Modify low-income credit union designations and secondary accounts. In summary, the bill includes: Supervisory Committee The supervisory committee must: perform or arrange for additional audits as requested by the board … Read More

Risk-Based Exam Scheduling

On December 28, 2016, the NCUA released Letter to Credit Unions 16-CU-12, detailing their exam scheduling policy which goes into effect January 1, 2017. For state-charted, federally insured credit unions, the Letter details that: Credit unions meeting any one of the following three criteria will receive NCUA exams that will begin between 8 and 12 months from the prior examination … Read More