NCUA notes help available to CUs on CECL implementation

Implementation of the current-expected-credit-loss (CECL) accounting standard kicks in next January for credit unions, and their federal regulator on Thursday noted plans to help them complete the first hurdle.

During a briefing during Thursday’s open National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Board meeting on the agency’s 2022 supervisory priorities, staff noted that the agency plans to provide training and guidance to credit unions as they adopt the new accounting model.

This help will include a spreadsheet to be released later this year, staff said. They added that more training would be made available to credit unions on an as-needed basis.

In other board meeting discussion, the NCUA Board was briefed by staff on a recent increase (approved by notation vote of the board in December, as well as by banking regulators) in maximum civil monetary penalty (CMP) amounts, as required by statute; and on the agency’s Central Liquidity Facility (CLF), including plans to increase credit union membership in the facility to “to better serve individual CUs, the Share Insurance Fund and the system overall.”

The NCUA Board has written Congress to urge restoration and permanence for the enhanced authorities provided to the CLF as part of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and which, while extended, expired at the end of 2021. The CARES Act enhancements included an increase in the facility’s maximum legal borrowing authority; temporary access for corporate credit unions, as agent members, to borrow for their own needs; greater flexibility and affordability to agent members to join and serve smaller groups of their covered institutions than their entire memberships; and more clarity and flexibility for the NCUA Board regarding CLF loans.

CMP final rule (notice for Federal Register)

Briefing document on supervisory priorities

Briefing on CLF