5 ways to refine FOM with NCUA’s Vice Chairman Rick Metsger
You may have seen the recent news from NCUA’s Vice Chairman Rick Metsger about his proposed changes to today’s Field of Membership (FOM) requirements. To get his thoughts behind each of his five changes, we invited Mr. Metsger on the show for the inside scoop. But before we proceed, listed below are his five changes:
1. Allowing credit unions converting from single or multiple common bonds to community charters to continue serving select employer groups even if they are located outside the new community charter boundaries;
2. Permitting the addition of adjacent areas to community charters without requiring them to be core-based statistical areas;
3. Eliminating the requirement that a community charter be based on a core area of a core-based statistical area;
4. Revising and simplifying the process for determining that an area is “underserved;” and
5. Allowing active-duty military personnel and their families to automatically qualify as low-income households.
As you can see, the top three deal with expanding memberships — which would greatly benefit credit unions nationwide. The fourth seems to open the door to more “underserved” individuals and the fifth is, well, a no brainer in benefiting the fine folks who protect our country.
As a kicker, we touched on the bankers’ perspective, fueling their fire on loosening credit union FOM rules further. Even ABA’s Keith Leggett, who was recently on our show, provided a bit of written commentary on Mr. Metsger’s changes — as we discussed toward the end of the interview. Check it out and let us know your thoughts on these possible FOM changes.
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