As Prepared for Delivery on June 24, 2026
Opening Statement for the Board Meeting
Welcome to NCUA and thank you for joining us for today’s Board meeting. We have three items on the agenda. First, we’ll receive a regulatory update. Next, we’ll have a Q1 briefing on the NCUA Share Insurance Fund. And last, we’ll receive an update on the 2026 Mid-Year Budget.
Statement Following the Regulatory Update Briefing
Thank you, Amanda for this update.
We are making great progress on NCUA’s Deregulation Project. Since we launched this effort, we’ve had 31 Notice of Proposed Rulemakings and received hundreds of comments from stakeholders. And this is just Phase 1. We have more to come, and we continue to invite feedback from credit union stakeholders as we move through the process of cleaning up our regulations and focusing on the safety, soundness, and resilience of credit unions.
Phase 1 of the Deregulation Project is focused on identifying and addressing obsolete, duplicative, overly burdensome, or guidance-suitable regulations.
You’ve given some great examples by highlighting four rules we’ve focused on during this phase. Two that stood out to me during your briefing were Accuracy in Advertising and Third-Party Servicing.
The proposed changes for Accuracy in Advertising would remove advertising requirements that are highly prescriptive, inflexible, and simply not well suited to modern advertising. This is the kind of thing we can and should be eliminating so we don’t require credit unions to jump through unnecessary hoops to comply with regulation.
Another good example was the Board’s proposed changes to Third-Party Servicing of Indirect Vehicle Loans, where we are proposing the removal of overly prescriptive requirements. This proposal would remove the limit on the indirect loans and participation loans a credit union may purchase from one servicer.
NCUA doesn’t need to tell credit unions how to operate and manage their business unless there is material risk involved. We don’t run credit unions. When we give credit unions the flexibility to operate as they see fit, without sacrificing safety and soundness, they’re better able to meet member needs.
On a final note, I’d like to highlight that we’ve issued four final rules in recent weeks.
The first was on Dependent Care and Board Member Reimbursement. The NCUA Board amended its regulations concerning the reimbursement of reasonable expenses for federal credit union officials, in order to remove potential barriers to volunteer service. This final rule provides flexibility for a federal credit union’s board to adopt more family-friendly policies tailored to its size and operations.
This rule applies to all federal credit unions and includes corporate federal credit unions. It will not apply to federally insured, state-chartered credit unions, which remain subject to state law.
Last Monday, NCUA issued a final rule revising records preservation requirements. This rule clarifies the purpose of the regulation, removes two Appendices, and updates certain definitions. It also implements two changes based on the feedback received from public comments.
The Board agreed that credit unions should have more flexibility in determining the content of their vital records preservation log rather than adhere to a prescriptive list. Most agencies already had guidelines on how long records have to be kept. NCUA is finally among them.
NCUA also issued an interim final rule to clarify federal credit unions’ power to levy, receive, or otherwise obtain non-interest charges and fees, including interchange fees, under the Federal Credit Union Act. NCUA has exclusive authority over federal credit unions’ ability to levy non-interest charges and fees.
The Interim Final Rule is intended to preempt any state law affecting the non-interest charges and fees related to payment card services. NCUA is adopting this Interim Final Rule both to clarify federal credit union authority and to avoid any disparity between federal credit unions and national banks --- especially in light of a recently issued interim final rule on the same subject by the OCC.
As NCUA’s Interim Final Rule makes clear, state rules regulating federal credit union activity related to non-interest charges and fees, including interchange fees, are not applicable to federal credit unions.
The fourth, final rule Amanda highlighted was prohibition on the use of reputation risk.
This rule was needed because of past situations where regulators used reputation risk as a cudgel to push ideological agendas that Congress never authorized.
The rule prohibits NCUA from instructing credit unions to close accounts, deny products or services, or altogether terminate products and services on the basis of a person or entity’s protected class or political views. It grounds NCUA’s supervision and examination programs in data-driven conclusions to eliminate the risk of individual perspectives driving the supervisory process.
We look forward to finalizing more proposed rules in the weeks and months to come.
Statement Following the Share Insurance Fund Quarterly Briefing
Melissa, thank you for your Board briefing on the Share Insurance Fund Quarterly Report.
This new dashboard, which can be found on NCUA’s website, is doing a great job of making this information accessible and easy to understand. I like how it allows the user to hover over data to get additional information. This is great work.
The data presented today reinforces that the Share Insurance Fund remained strong at the start of 2026, supported by solid credit union performance.
The first quarter data shows continued growth with just under a $400 million dollar increase from Q4 2025, giving the Share Insurance Fund $24.5 billion in total assets.
Total reserves increased to $249.3 million and cash and investments are $23.9 billion, an increase of 5.9% since Q1 2025.
The Share Insurance Fund net income totaled $105.3 million in Q1 compared to $79.8 million in Q1 2025. That’s a 32% increase in net income.
Our equity ratio is 1.30% as calculated on December 31st, 2025.
And total reserves increased by $15.3 million in Q1.
There were 3 credit union failures in the first quarter of 2026, which incurred $5.7 million in losses to the Share Insurance Fund.
The number of CAMELS code 3 credit unions decreased from 653 to 636 and credit unions with CAMELS codes 4 and 5 also decreased from 117 to 107 in Q1.
CAMELS data remained stable, with over 92% of credit unions rated in CAMELS code 1 or 2.
That concludes my remarks.
Statement Following the Mid-Year Budget Briefing
Melissa, thank you for your presentation.
I’m encouraged to see how significantly we have been able to reduce our budget for 2026. Through the month of May, NCUA’s spending was 17.1% lower than the same period in 2025.
In fact, compared to the last three years, our spending is down in all cost categories, including employee compensation. This is significant.
As I’ve said in the past, when it comes to NCUA’s budget, we are spending other people’s money. Our job is to be good stewards of that money and I believe we are doing just that.
We are a smaller agency than we were at the start of 2025 and this mid-year budget reflects how we are adapting to our new normal -- both efficiently and with fiduciary responsibility.
As we move into the second half of the year, I’m encouraged by the progress on agency reorganization projects and our capital projects and I believe our budget will continue to reflect this positive direction.
That concludes my remarks.