This week the trade organization representing credit unions, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), urged the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to delegate examination and enforcement authority over certain credit unions to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).

Under Section 1025 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act, the CFPB has the examination and enforcement authority over credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets. The National Credit Union Administration only conducts examinations of credit unions under the CFPB’s threshold.

Currently, there are only nine credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets: Navy Federal Credit Union, State Employees Credit Union, PenFed, BECU, SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, The Golden 1 Credit Union, First Technology Federal Credit Union, Alliant Credit Union and America First Credit Union.

On April 22, CUNA wrote to Kathy Kraninger, director of the CFPB, to explain that CFPB’s resources would be better focused on supervising banks, particularly given that less than 1% of all complaints submitted to the CFPB relate to credit unions.

Although it is unclear what position the CFPB will ultimately take regarding its supervisory and enforcement authority over credit unions, the CUNA letter is consistent with a July 2017 request from the NCUA and comes at a time when the CFPB appears to be scaling back its authority overall.

This news article about the CUNA letter provides further details.