In his maiden speech to the GAC in March 2015, then minority NCUA Board Member McWatters closed with the following suggestion:
“The NCUA board should establish not less than three formal advisory committees with the mandate to advise the NCUA Board about:
- NCUA’ s budget and budgetary process,
- NCUA’s examination programs and appeals process, and
- Areas where NCUA may expedite regulatory relief for the credit union community without compromising safety and soundness. . .”
Nothing happened then or later when he became Chair.
An Example of an Advisory Board and its Agenda
In 2009, the FDIC established an Advisory Committee on Community Banking to provide input on bank policy and regulatory matters. It has 18 members from across the country. The Committee meets this week. The meeting is webcast live as detailed in the following:
On July 28, 2020, the Advisory Committee will meet to address a wide range of issues. The agenda includes: a discussion of local banking conditions; a briefing on the FDIC’s Rapid Prototyping Competition; an update on supervision matters; a report from its Minority Depository Institutions Subcommittee; and a discussion of diversity and inclusion at community banks. This meeting of the Advisory Committee on Community Banking will be Webcast live at http://fdic.windrosemedia.com beginning at 1 p.m. EDT.
In addition to seeing the advisory concept at work, I thought the rapid prototyping report would be of immediate relevance to the credit union community. NCUA has spent years trying to improve its quarterly reporting process, mostly making it longer.
Here is the FDIC’s innovative approach to making this technological improvement happen quickly and why you may want to tune in:
On June 30, FDIC announced the start of a rapid prototyping competition to help develop a new and innovative approach to financial reporting, particularly for community banks.
Twenty technology firms from across the country have been invited to participate in the competition. The competitors will develop proposed solutions over the next several months that will be presented to the FDIC for consideration, similar to an extended version of a “tech sprint” or “hackathon.” Competing firms represent leaders in the financial services, data management, data analytics, and AI/ML fields.
These modern tools – and lessons learned in future competitions – will help make financial reporting seamless and less burdensome for banks, provide more timely and granular data to the FDIC on industry health, and promote more efficient supervision of individual banks.