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CUNA board chairman testified on regulatory burden at Senate Banking Committee hearing
Testimony of Dennis Pierce
Chief Executive Officer, CommunityAmerica Credit Union
On Behalf of the Credit Union National Association
Before the Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs
United States Senate
Hearing Entitled: “Examining the State of Small Depository Institutions”
September 16, 2014
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Crapo and Members of the Committee:
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing. My name is Dennis Pierce, and I am Chief Executive Officer of CommunityAmerica Credit Union in Kansas City, Missouri. I am also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), on whose behalf I am testifying today. CommunityAmerica Credit Union is the second largest credit union in Missouri with $1.9 billion in assets and over 180,000 members. CUNA is the largest credit union trade association in the United States representing over 6,600 federally and state chartered credit unions and their 100 million members.
As you know, credit unions are member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperatives, which exist to promote thrift and provide access to credit for provident purposes to their members. This is the express purpose of credit unions – nothing more and nothing less. Credit unions are not in business to make money for outside stockholders. The users of credit unions are not a means to an end; for the credit union, its members are the end. This characteristic is the key differential between not-for-profit credit unions and for-profit banks. The credit union structural difference helped cooperative financial institutions come through the Great Recession nearly unscathed while the banking industry teetered on near-complete collapse. When considering regulatory burden, particularly as it relates to consumer financial protection, it is critical that policymakers understand that the incentive structure for credit unions and banks is quite different, and the regulatory structure should reflect those differences. In short, credit union members really don’t need that much protection from the credit unions they own.
Click here for the full transcript…