Replaced: Geoff Bacino Immediate Past Employment: U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Assistant Director for Administration Term: Expires August 2005 CUT: What do you think are your biggest accomplishments on the board so far? My first two years on the NCUA Board, I crisscrossed the country meeting credit union leaders and learning about CU issues in order to regulate effectively. I encouraged CUs to reach out to everyone in their field of membership and provided information to help accomplish this. My main accomplishments so far: *Making NCUA's member business lending regulation more flexible and competitive. I asked our general counsel to review waivers granted to seven states, which led to our revised MBL rule. *Meeting with SBA Administrator Hector Barreto to convince the agency to change its policy and allow all CUs to apply for SBA loan guarantees. *Establishing a Small CU Working Group to examine whether NCUA policies and procedures could be changed to help these CUs in response to concerns raised by small CU officials. *Launching the Partnering and Leadership Success (PALS) initiative and hosting PALS workshops to help CUs turn potential members into actual members. The workshops enable CU officials to learn from peers who have had successful experiences. *Providing information in response to requests from CU officials for more communications on improving outreach and partnerships, including a Latino Connection Kit, MBL CD, and a free partnership publication on the PALS website. *Initiating a safety and soundness study of credit unions that recently converted to a community charter, which found that most converting FCUs grow stronger through community outreach. Several initiatives to protect the soundness of CUs' investments and promote consumers' confidence in CUs were implemented at my suggestion, including: *Initiating supervisory changes requiring examiners to check due diligence on investment brokers, to protect CUs from contracting with unregistered brokers. *Initiating regulatory changes requiring corporates to invest in graded securities only. *Speaking frequently about the comparative strength of federal insurance over private insurance to increase awareness among CU officials, and convincing the Consumer Federation of America Board to amend their policy to support federal insurance for CUs as well as banks. *Providing guidance in the preamble to NCUA's share insurance regulation to protect members from losing coverage after mergers. *Helping members become more educated consumers by promoting financial literacy. CUT: What are your goals for remainder of time on the NCUA Board? As a regulator, my primary role continues to be ensuring safety and soundness. Therefore, I will continue: *Raising awareness of the threat of rising interest rates, and advising CUs with high concentrations of fixed-rate mortgages to consider selling some in the secondary market. *Reminding CUs that diversifying assets and membership strengthens safety and soundness. *Urging CUs to reach out to everyone in their FOM with a variety of affordable products and services. *Spreading the message that attracting new members, especially the underserved, is not only the right thing to do; it's good business. *Hosting more PALS workshops to highlight innovative programs, and expanding the PALS website to include best practices. *Initiating changes at NCUA to help small CUs thrive, with recommendations to come from our Small CU Working Group. I look forward to continue meeting with CU leaders to hear their concerns and learn about all the wonderful ways they serve members. [email protected]