NCUSIF Reserve Balance And Assets Rose in April

The NCUSIF’s reserve balance was $5.3 billion last month and the fund lost $2.5 million in income, NCUA Chief Financial Officer Mary Ann Woodson told the board last Thursday.The reserve balance was $5.2 billion at the end of March.The fund had $23.5 billion in assets at the end of April, compared with $23.4 billion at the end of March and $7.6 billion in April 2008. The increase was caused by such factors as increased payments from credit unions for the cost of insurance and an increase in the amount recovered from liquidated credit unions.There was a $136.7 million reserve-loss expense for natural person credit unions last month and $166.5 million this year. The reserve-loss expense for corporate credit unions was $39.4 million in April and $4.9 billion this year. The NCUSIF’s equity ratio was unchanged at 1.3%.The fund has paid out $21.5 million so far this year as a result of four credit union failures this year.During the first four months of 2009, there were 288 credit unions with CAMEL Code ratings of 4 or 5, compared with 239 at the same time last year.Woodson said that 60% of those credit unions had $10 million or less in assets, 30% have been between $10 million and $100 million in assets and the rest have assets of over $100 million with 1.7% having assets over $1 billion.She added that 3.47% of all shares are at CAMEL 4 or 5 rated credit unions, compared with 1.61% during the first four months of 2008.The board also approved rules that clarify what information credit unions must disclose to credit reporting agencies and gave consumers the right to challenge an item on the report directly with a creditor rather than having to go through the credit reporting agency.The board also sent out for comment a proposed rule that would require a credit card issuer, such as a credit union, to include the date when an account was opened as part of the information it provides to credit reporting agencies for use in determining a consumer’s credit score.There is a 60-day comment period for the rule.–[email protected]