The NCUA Board has a unique opportunity to promulgate a regulation that will have a positive impact on small credit unions. At a future board meeting they will vote on changing the current definition of small entity credit unions from less than $50 million in assets to less than $100 million in assets. It is a good move but one that could be better.

The current definition of a small credit union was adopted by the board in 2013 and was the second time it has been changed since initially defined in 1987. The continued changes in the financial services industry and credit unions specifically dictate a more frequent review of the threshold and a more robust approach to setting a standard.

The Small Business Administration says that a business is small if its assets are under $550 million, whereas the CFPB uses the figure of $175 million or less to consider an entity as small. The differences in those numbers reflect quite a range and quite a disparity.