WASHINGTON — Meeting David Nason, assistant secretary for financial institutions at the U.S. Treasury Departments, has leaped higher on the agendas of both NAFCU and CUNA as part of their association's reactions to the department's recent blueprint for federal financial regulatory reform which would eliminate credit unions.

Nason has been tagged in several media outlets as one of the key architects of the department's financial reform document. NAFCU's CEO Fred Becker and other association executives met with Nason on April 8. CUNA's CEO Dan Mica, along with Chief Economist Bill Hampel and General Counsel Eric Richard will meet with him on April 14.

Becker characterized the meeting as good and said that NAFCU has always found Nason “willing to listen” to the association about credit union issues. He recounted that NAFCU had a long standing relationship with Nason which included meeting with him before he was nominated and being among the attendees at his swearing in. He said that NAFCU opposed the blueprint but did not consider the blueprint to have been written as an attack on credit unions.

In its most long term view the document presented an idealized world where the department outlined a regulatory structure which might have been perfect if they were starting from scratch, Becker explained. “If they were doing it all over maybe it would be have been better to have one charter and one insurance fund etc., but the world is not that way and won't be.”