As Prepared for Delivery on September 18, 2025
Opening Statement for the Board Meeting
Thank you for joining us for the board meeting today. Before we move to today’s briefing, I would like to share a few updates with the credit union community.
This year has been a time of tremendous change for NCUA. The agency has new leadership, a smaller workforce, and new priorities, with more changes to come.
Many of these changes will be reflected in the agency’s 2026-2030 Strategic Plan, which we aim to publish early next year. As part of the plan development process, we held the first-ever Strategic Plan Town Hall last week. The virtual event included representatives from credit unions, CUSOs, trades, and leagues.
NCUA staff asked questions related to challenges communities face and how NCUA can best support the safety and soundness of the credit union system while simultaneously encouraging innovation and growth. We received a lot of feedback on what’s working and not working, what the community would like to see regarding deregulation, and what issues they foresee for the future of the credit union system.
Even after the town hall we continued to receive feedback through AskNCUA. Thank you to all those who participated. This approach to strategic planning, which brings stakeholders into the conversation, is how I want to see the NCUA approach its work.
By listening and asking questions, we learn more about the needs of credit unions and how we can achieve our goal of safety and soundness while reducing the weight of burdensome and inefficient rules and regulations—especially for small and de novo credit unions who often have very specific needs and challenges.
A reminder that safety and soundness isn’t necessarily in conflict with right-sizing the regulatory burden. In fact, if we right-size in a thoughtful manner, we’ll make it less likely that America winds up dominated by a few, large credit unions. Consolidation is not the friend of a regulator. And it’s definitely not the friend of an insurer. NCUA, like any insurer, wants a diversified risk portfolio. It’s better for NCUA to have a wide plethora of credit unions, as diverse in their business model as they are in their fields of membership. Our examiners shouldn’t be telling credit unions that “this isn’t something we see at most credit unions,” or at least not in a manner that discourages a diverse set of business practices at America’s 4400 credit unions.
One thing that is clear following the feedback process is the outsized burden that obsolete, duplicative, and overly pre- or proscriptive regulations can have on credit unions. And in 2025, we’re down over 20 percent of our workforce. So we at the NCUA have an operational imperative to right-size everything we do.
The current President started the most far-reaching regulatory reform in American history. NCUA is proud to be part of this reform effort, and staff are currently reviewing our regulations to identify burdens that can be lifted.
You may notice that I continue to be the sole person sitting at the board table today. As I said before, no matter what the Board looks like, the NCUA will continue to fulfill its core mission, as well as seek ways to improve our effectiveness and efficiency.
Speaking of efficiency, there will be no board meeting in October given our inward focus. I also want to correct something I said earlier this year, which is that 2001 was the last time NCUA had a board meeting with just one board member.
That did happen in 2001, but in the interest of accuracy, I stand corrected since I was alerted that 2005 seems to be when NCUA last had a one-person board meeting. Looking at our records, it was almost exactly 20 years ago when the then-single-board-member and Chairman Joann Johnson ran a meeting like this. For what it’s worth, that meeting entailed Chair Johnson approving Final Rule, Part 713, related to Fidelity Bond and Insurance Coverage for Credit Unions. The rule remains on the books to this day.
The main thing is that NCUA insurance is as sound as ever. NCUA will continue to do business as usual, just as we did under the sole board member Chairmanships of Dennis Dollar and Joann Johnson. …And of course at some point in the future, there won’t be one board member. There may be zero or two or three, but regardless my mission and that of my colleagues is doing our jobs the best we can on behalf of America’s 140 million credit union members.
In the spirit of “business as usual” -- while we will not have a board meeting next month, we will hold our annual, public budget hearing. Stay tuned for more information on the specific timing of the hearing. Also, we will be publishing the staff draft 2026-2027 budget next week, so be on the lookout for that.
We have one item on the agenda for the September Board Meeting. The Office of the Chief Financial Officer will present the second quarter (Q2) briefing on the performance of the Share Insurance Fund.