NCUA Vice Chairman Kyle S. Hauptman at a meeting of the NCUA Board.
As Prepared for Delivery on January 16, 2025
This document sets the NCUA’s 2025 priorities to support its mission to protect the system of cooperative credit and its member-owners. It also supports the agency’s vision to strengthen communities and protect consumers by ensuring financial inclusion. These are impressive ideals and are pursued through the agency’s over-arching goals to:
- Ensure a safe, sound, and viable system.
- Improve the financial well-being of individuals and communities.
- Maximize the NCUA’s organizational performance.
The continued focus on quantifiable outputs and outcomes is yielding positive results. Performance indicators, such as 1.2.2 regarding the post examination survey, communicates the Board’s and management’s expectations. This performance indicator tells NCUA staff and credit unions that the Agency values collaboration, the narrative, and timely delivery of examination reports. Staff achieved a 94 percent positive response rating from credit unions on a goal of 90 percent. This was in a year with new and difficult challenges for credit unions and examiners. As with all customer-service surveys, much of the value comes from the questions, not just the answers. And then, there’s the fact the NCUA does the survey in the first place. In this era, where we constantly give and get feedback via our phones and computers, people notice when government agencies only have a poorly advertised ‘ombudsman.’ Those agencies aren’t taking the basic steps to ensure quality control, so I appreciate this aspect of today’s plan.
And one more note on transparency: credit unions that have the opportunity to record their exit meeting but decide not to do so are handicapping themselves. It’s not about bad behavior or a testy exam, although that could occasionally be one benefit. Recording just provides valuable information for new management and new examiners. Plus, transcripts are automated these days. I assure any credit union that a transcript of your exit meeting will be at least as valuable as some of the thousands of documents saved on your various systems. These recordings and transcripts can be a godsend for examiners as well.
Back to the specifics of today’s vote: Although the 2025 Annual Performance Plan is substantially similar to the 2024 plan, there are a few performance indicators of note around supporting the viability of credit unions. You do not expect ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goals’ (BHAGs) in most government plans but growing the number of members in MDI-designated credit unions by 20 percent over 2024 year-end levels is notable. Conducting small credit union and MDI assistance support for 100 percent of participating credit unions is also notable.
As a reminder, if your credit union is $100 million or less, or an MDI of any size, you may request special assistance outside of exam hours. You may either request training from your examiner or through the regional office. We have also done this kind of training or assistance in a roundtable format. I urge you to ask for help if you need it.