NCUA Chairman Todd M. Harper Statement on the NCUA’s 2024 Annual Performance Plan

As Prepared for Delivery on January 18, 2024

Thank you, Lindsey and NancyRae, for your presentation on the National Credit Union Administration’s 2024 Annual Performance Plan. And, thank you to the entire team in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer for your diligent and collaborative efforts in preparing the Annual Performance Plan for the NCUA Board’s consideration today. I also want to thank Vice Chairman Hauptman and Board Member Otsuka for their thoughtful comments, additions, and modifications to this management tool.

As I have often said, if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That’s what makes this plan so important. The NCUA’s 2024 Annual Performance Plan includes specific performance measures and targets in support of the goals in the agency’s 2022–2026 Strategic Plan. With this plan and the strategies in place for two years now, the NCUA Board continues to uphold its responsibility to ensure the agency achieves its goals and objectives.

The performance plan before us today describes the means, strategies, and specific actions the agency has resourced and intends to undertake in 2024 to achieve each strategic objective. It also outlines how the agency will measure its performance and continue to effectively supervise and insure a growing and evolving credit union system, including during times of economic uncertainty.

This year, the plan includes three strategic goals supported by 10 strategic objectives and 16 performance goals with 27 performance indicators. It’s worth noting that the number of performance indicators is down considerably from past plans. This certainly doesn’t mean that the NCUA will perform less. Rather, the goals were developed to define a more specific outcome, and they enable a more focused approach to expected performance. Additionally, a more streamlined approach is a management best practice.

The NCUA in 2024 will continue to address consumer financial protection on equal footing with safety and soundness. In support of this goal, the NCUA will increase the target for fair lending exams by 10, moving from 50 to 60, to ensure credit unions are complying with the laws established to protect consumers against discrimination.

Also, the NCUA will continue to focus on rising and continuing challenges within the credit union system. Those risks include liquidity, interest rate, credit, and compliance risk, as well as the omnipresent cybersecurity risk.

Before closing, I do have a few questions for the team about the performance plan before us today. The first question relates to the fair lending exams, an important component of consumer financial protection. With the increase in fair lending exams planned for this performance year, how was the metric developed, and how will we measure it?

Thank you. By increasing the number of fair lending examinations, the NCUA will help to ensure credit unions comply with the laws to protect credit union members against discrimination.

My next question concerns our staffing levels and the metric to have no more than a five-percent vacancy rate at any given time across the agency. That equates to 62 positions or less. How was this metric developed, why is it important to meet that goal, and what actions are planned to ensure its successful implementation?

Thank you. This staffing goal will allow us to maximize our potential and meet our mission. I was glad to see our progress, beginning last year, with closing the hiring gap in our examiner ranks. In all, we onboarded 148 new team members last year, including 108 examiners. That may be a record for examiner hires.

Examiners affect much of what the agency does and achieves, so it’s important that we have a continual pipeline of new examiners. Having such a pipeline is an example of good succession planning, as new examiners can learn from more seasoned examiners, make their way into more senior examiner positions and eventually supervisory positions, and pave the way for the next generation of examiners. With a generational change occurring within our executive ranks, the NCUA must prepare for that evolution, just as we expect credit unions to also develop succession plans.

In the spirit of transparency and accountability, I additionally want to remind all stakeholders that the results of our annual performance plan measures are reported each year in the NCUA’s Annual Report to Congress. Additionally, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer provides quarterly updates that the NCUA Board uses to track progress and, if necessary, take appropriate actions to keep us on track.

Finally, this plan provides the NCUA with a roadmap for measuring performance, but it is the dedication and hard work of our NCUA team that will allow us to succeed as an agency. I am proud to serve alongside each one of you. I know that, together, we will fulfill our goals and continue to protect credit union members and the system of cooperative credit.

That concludes my remarks. I now recognize Vice Chairman Hauptman.