Credit union and bank executives told a congressional committee on Thursday Congress should change the structure of the CFPB to a five-person commission.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) asked Wally Murray, president/CEO of the $515 million Greater Nevada Credit Union in Carson City, Nev., how putting a board in charge of the CFPB would help in terms of regulatory relief.
"We just believe it creates an environment for more sensible rulemaking from collaboration, much like among this committee, from different minds," Murray, chairman of the Nevada Credit Union League, told Brown during a Senate Banking Committee hearing. "When you have one person in charge of the entire bureau, who sets that agenda? One person essentially. We just feel like it's a more common sense approach to coming out with common sense regulation."
R. Daniel Blanton, CEO of the Georgia Bank & Trust and chairman-elect of the American Bankers Association, shared the same view.
"We support a system such as the FDIC Board of Governors. It's worked very well for the FDIC," he said. "With that set of different governors, you get different views and opinions and you get to see a consensus work as opposed to one particular person's direction or whim as to how they want something done."
Ed Templeton, president/CEO of the $691 million SRP Federal Credit Union North Augusta, S.C., agreed with Murray and Blanton.
"Conceptually, three or five people coming together to achieve a goal are going to bring a different perspective, different ideas. There's going to be compromise and there's going to be discussion," he said. "Multiple heads bring greater wisdom."
Templeton said a CFPB board would cause a formal agenda to be released for meetings.
"With the board structure, you would need an agenda. I think the light of day begins shining in and people get time to be prepared and develop concepts and ideas," he said.
Michael D. Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, said he strongly supports a single director.
"We believe strongly that the single director will be far more responsive to community financial institution concerns. As we've seen with almost every commission, they become very quickly big bank centric," he said. "We just had to fight to get one on the Fed out of seven spots."
Calhoun referred to an amendment to the reauthorization of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, which requires the president to appoint at least one member of the Federal Reserve Board who has demonstrated primary experience working in or supervising community banks having less than $10 billion in total assets.
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