Association of Corporate Credit Unions Taps Dollar Associates for Government Relations

WASHINGTON – Dollar Associates has landed its second major client in the Association of Corporate Credit Unions. Dollar Associates of course is the fledgling consulting company formed by former NCUA Chairman Dennis Dollar and his special assistant Kirk Cuevas. The ACCU plans on working with Dollar Associates to assist it in the legislative, regulatory and political arenas. “This is part of an overall strategy to increase corporates’ advocacy capabilities in an effort to protect their own financial health and ultimately the health of its member credit unions,” said ACCU Executive Director Mike Canning, who is only about a year and a half in running ACCU. Canning has increased the ACCU’s political profile already, starting some congressional visit programs with corporates during congressional breaks, and the ACCU will sponsor some events at the upcoming political party conventions. “Given the taxation surprises of the last six months, corporates are invigorating their advocacy skills and contacts so as to be ahead of the curves in the road that may lie ahead,” said Canning. Dollar believes the corporates are a vital cog in the credit union industry. “I have been a believer that the corporate system, because of its comfort level with credit unions, really has the potential to be an even greater strategic partner, particularly with small and medium sized credit unions,” he said. Because of Dollar’s career on the board he cannot lobby NCUA directly, however Cuevas can. Only a few months into his consulting gig, Dollar said he’s energized. “We’re still only six weeks in now, so it’s too early to tell exactly the book of business we’ll have, but to use a political term, the early returns are very good,” said Dollar who classified the ACCU as one of Dollar Associates’ major accounts. The other being the recently inked deal with overdraft protection firm Stunk & Associates, a firm that may need the skills of Dollar if the Fed and consumer groups continue to express interest into looking deeper into how overdraft programs are regulated. Some believe overdraft protection should fall under Truth in Lending. Dollar said he’s probably traveling more now than he was during his last year as chairman. “During the last year the number of speaking invitations went down because organizations weren’t sure if I was going to be around,” he said. Dollar said extensive travel is all part of the life of a consultant. “When you go into consulting a negative is there is an awful lot of travel. The positive is you are your own boss and you can pick and choose your client base based on the hours you have,” he said. This is actually a good time for heavy travel, said Dollar. His son just graduated college and is married and his daughter is just starting at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dollar said his firm has seen a lot of interest from credit unions looking at field of membership changes, especially with community and TIP charters. When NCUA sees a community charter package come across that we worked on, we want them to think these are the best packages they see. I haven’t forgotten how it works,” he said. He said the firm will be cautious in taking on too many strategic planning jobs because they can be time consuming. Dollar and Cuevas are a two man team for now, and Dollar doesn’t see that changing in the very near future. “We know how many hours we have. We are allocating them to our client base and we still have hours to spare. The day will come when we’ll max out what we can do and we’ll consider taking on additional associates,” said Dollar. [email protected]