From interviews with participants, the study found that there was an increase in compliance burden associated with the rules. In part, the costs included increases in staff, training, and time allocation for regulatory compliance and updates to compliance systems.

“Today's GAO report confirms that Dodd-Frank regulations have increased compliance burdens on credit unions,” NAFCU President/CEO Dan Berger said in a release. “Unfortunately, the methodology of the study, and the GAO acknowledges this in its report, fails to capture the full impact of these crushing regulatory burdens.”

Berger noted that since the second quarter of 2010, the industry has lost more than 1,280 credit unions, which represents more than 17% of the total number of financial cooperatives. Specifically, 96% of them had assets of less than $100 million.

Given the fact that many Dodd-Frank regulations have yet to be implemented, we expect the cumulative burden will no doubt exacerbate the negative impact on the credit union industry,” he continued. “It has been widely recognized by Congress that credit unions did not participate in the risky behavior that led to the financial crisis that these regulations were intended to address. This is why we have and will continue to urge the CFPB and the NCUA to use their authority to provide all possible regulatory relief to credit unions.”

CUNA said in a statement that it has “consistently warned of the serious costs to credit unions and consumers represented by the burden of rules that sprang from the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.”

The trade organization added that the Truth in Lending Act-Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosure rule and the new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule could threaten to decrease mortgage-credit availability to credit union members.

“It is our hope that Congress will thoroughly investigate the costs of regulatory burden as the full picture unfolds and more regulatory requirements become effective,” CUNA said.

Additionally, the GAO revealed that industry officials also reported a decline in specific business activities, such as loans that are not qualified mortgages, due to fear of litigation or not being able to sell those loans to secondary markets.

“The results of surveys we reviewed suggest that there have been moderate to minimal initial reductions in the availability of credit among those responding to the various surveys and regulatory data to date have not confirmed a negative impact on mortgage lending. However, these results do not necessarily rule out significant effects or the possibility that effects may arise in the future,” the report read.

Further, residential mortgage loans as a fraction of assets have generally grown for banks of all sizes and for some smaller credit unions, but have decreased for larger credit unions, according to the findings.

However, the report added that consumer demand for credit may be a factor for consideration beyond the influence of Dodd-Frank Act rules.

A letter from the NCUA was also contained in the report. The NCUA said it acknowledged the difficulty of clearly identifying the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act regulations on community banks, credit unions and systemically important financial institutions.

It added that it would like to see a “deeper consideration of structure of the credit union industry,” which may help to more clearly illustrate the effects of the act on the sector. The NCUA further suggested using a set of indicators “better-calibrated to credit union business models,” which may be more helpful in assessing the effects of the Dodd-Frank Act on smaller credit unions.

The regulator also noted that comparing credit unions to community banks may not be appropriate “because readers with limited background in these sectors may not be able to judge the extent of the differences between these institutions.”

The GAO also updated indicators from its prior reports that monitored key risk characteristics of large U.S. bank holding companies. Additionally, it added new indicators that monitor interconnectedness.

The GAO reported that changes in the indicators are “not evidence of causal links to the act's provisions, some indicators suggest companies' leverage generally decreased and liquidity generally improved since the act's passage.”

Additionally, the report said that the updated regression analysis “suggests that the act has had little effect on the funding costs of these companies and may be associated with improvements in some measures of their safety and soundness.