WASHINGTON — With an anticlimactic voice vote and little debate, the House on Tuesday night approved a measure giving credit unions some of the regulatory relief they have been seeking.
The Credit Union Bank and Thrift Regulatory Relief Act (H.R. 6318) grandfathers in existing designations of underserved areas and allows federal credit unions to apply to serve underserved areas outside their field of service. Loans in those communities and to religious non-profit institutions would not count against their Member Business Loan cap. It would also permit credit unions to provide short-term unsecured loans to anyone in their field of membership.
The fate of the measure, which does not raise the overall MBL cap of 12.5% of a credit union's total assets, in the Senate is unclear. Lobbyists for the two largest credit union trade associations said that chamber is not as far along as the House on regulatory relief and there are a limited number of legislative days remaining this year.
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The measure, which also allows financial institutions to pay interest on business checking accounts, was a compromise between banks and credit unions. Banks had previously been a major force in stopping regulatory relief for credit unions because they felt it gave credit unions an unfair competitive advantage.
Rep. Paul Kanjorski, (D-Pa.), one of the measure's key sponsors said during the House debate that it is "an important step forward in our legislative debates about how best to ensure that credit unions can better serve their members."
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