Category: Cooperative Design

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NCUA’s NCUSIF Accounting Short-Changes Credit Unions

This is second of five articles is to assist credit unions responding to NCUA on the capital adequacy (NOL) of the NCUSIF due July 26.  The first article quoted Chairman Todd Harper’s unsubstantiated view that  NCUSIF’s structure is inadequate and requires more NCUA authority to assess premiums.

This article reviews the accounting changes, beginning in 2001, that reduced NCUSIF dividends and increased expenses. These changes have prompted some to suggest that NCUSIF’s financial design is inadequate — a mistaken judgment I will challenge.

NCUA published NCUSIF’s audited financial statements for 2008 and 2009 only after a prolonged delay. With these audits NCUA changed accounting standards creating  confusion, misleading presentations and uncertainty about what assets were audited.

The NCUSIF is unique due to its cooperatively underwritten financial structure.  To provide relevant responses to NCUA’s request requires agreement on basic facts.  NCUA’s changes  in 2000  deviated from the NCUSIF’s prior consistent accounting practices used since the 1984 redesign was approved by Congress.

These changes resulted an ever increasing draw on the NCUSIF to pay a larger proportion of NCUA’s operating expenses and underpaying dividends to the credit union owners.

Since 2008  and two financial crises, the data show that  the NCUSIF’s  operating expenses exceed  insurance losses from problem credit unions. Instead of a capital reserve helping credit unions, the NCUSIF has become the main source for financing the agency’s administration, not the required operating fee.

The following is a description of these significant changes in NCUA’s management of the NCUSIF.

Manipulation of the NOL

From 1984 though 2000, NCUA was consistent in its calculations of the NOL. Credit unions’ 1% deposit funding obligation has always been an explicit legal liability. As stated in the Act: Federally insured credit unions are required to maintain a deposit equal to one percent of their insured shares with the Insurance Fund. 12 U.S.C. 1782(c)(1)(A)(i).

In the NCUSIF’s 2000 Annual Audit, this 1% capitalization and NOL calculation are reported as follows in audit footnote 5.

“The Credit Union Membership Access Act (CUMAA) of 1998 mandated changes to the Fund’s capitalization provisions effective January 1, 2000. . . The NCUA board has determined the normal operating level to be 1.33% as of December 31, 2000 which considers an estimated $31.9 million in deposit adjustments to be billed to insured credit unions in 2001 based upon insured shares as of December 31, 2000. . . The CUMMA mandates that the use of year-end reports of insured shares in the calculation of the specified ratios, and the dividends related to 2000 will be declared and paid in 2001 based on insured shares as of December 31, 2000.”

This 1.33% ratio was calculated by dividing NCUSIF’s audited reserves plus 1% of yearend insured shares by total insured shares. This method was the basis for sending credit unions a sixth consecutive dividend from 1995 through 2000.

But in 2001, the Board changed this calculation both retroactively for 2000 and going forward in 2001 and ever after. This change is described in footnote 5 in the 2001 audit:

“The NCUA Board has determined that the normal operation level is 1.30% as of December 31, 2001 and December 31, 2000. The calculated equity ratio at December 31, 2001 was 1.25%. The equity ratio at December 31, 2000 was 1.33% which considered an estimated $31.9 million in deposit adjustments billed to insured credit unions in 2001 based upon total insured shares as of December 31, 2000. Subsequently such deposit adjustments were excluded and the calculated equity ratio at December 31, 2000 was revised to 1.30%.“

However, NCUA did pay the previously calculated dividend for 2000 based on the initial 1.33% NOL. “Dividends of $99.5 million which were associated with insured shares of December 31, 2000 were declared and paid in 2001.”

If the same method of calculating equity to insured shares ratio in 2000 were applied in 2001, the resulting NOL would be 1.303%– not 1.25%– thus triggering a small dividend.

By undercounting the full 1% deposit NCUA avoided paying  a dividend. It misstated the actual NOL of 1.3% by 5 basis points, a significant reduction.

There was no basis for this change. In every year prior to 2001 NCUA sent invoices after yearend. That is the case today as NCUA bills credit unions their required true-up on insured savings after receiving the yearend call reports.   The  yearend NOL determination is easy and transparent– both the audited reserves and credit unions’ report of insured shares are available at the same time from the same source.

In making this arbitrary change to the NOL calculation, NCUA has understated the actual NOL to the present day. The underreporting of this ratio meant NCUA did not pay dividends as required (as in 2001) and understated the actual NOL ratio.

Graph Heading;  NCUA’s Reported NOL Understates NCUSIF’s Actual Capital Ratio (2008-2020)

Changing the OTR in 2000

Another NCUA draw upon the fund began at this time. In 2000 NCUA increased the percentage of its operating expenses charged to the fund via the Overhead Transfer Rate (OTR). The change from 50% to 66.7% was a 33% increase in just one year. This increase occurred  even though state chartered federally insured credit unions (FISCU’s) were only 44% of the total 10,316 of the NCUSIF’s insured base.

The agency continued to use this annual transfer in uneven and undocumented patterns reaching a peak OTR of 73.1% in 2016. This  increase reimbursement for agency expenses and understating the actual NOL resulted in no or only partial dividends due the credit union owners.  This dividend drop-off took place even though insured losses from 2001 until 2008 were either 0 or less than 1/2 of a basis point.

For example, in the 2006 audit, the NCUSIF declared an NOL of 1.304 requiring a dividend of $51.5 million. The actual ratio was 8 basis points higher and should have resulted in $103 million more paid out but which was kept in the NCUSIF.

No Timely Numbers and Changing Auditors

In the midst of the 2009 financial crisis, NCUA conserved US Central and WesCorp. Chairman Michael Fryzel asserted in a March 21, 2009 Wall Street Journal interview, “With us in control, we’d get honest numbers.”

That is exactly the opposite of how NCUA reported its own numbers for the NCUSIF. All the corporates routinely filed and published full 5310 monthly financial reports with current portfolio valuations within 30 days of every month end.  The corporates were managing over $100 billion in investments. But  NCUA did not release its December 2008 NCUSIF audit until a year and a half after yearend.

During this period of  uncertainty, NCUA took the following steps:

  • It replaced the NCUSIF’s 2008 auditor Deloitte, Touche with KPMG for 2009;
  • It changed auditing standards–from private GAAP to government GAAP;
  • It released the December 2008 audit on June 10, 2010, 15 months after the statutory April 1 deadline for reporting to Congress.

These actions typify a reporting entity with serious managerial difficulties subsequently noted by both auditors.

By delaying the release of the numbers, credit unions did not know the status of the fund. NCUA statements ranged from Chairman Fryzel’s assurance in the WS J that “regulators aren’t concerned about the health of any other wholesale credit unions besides the two brought into conservatorship” to wild exaggerations of losses that would cause write off of credit unions’ 1% deposit base.

The corporates managing the problem assets reported timely; NCUA did not.

NCUA provided few factual updates to counter the rampant hyperbole. Meanwhile the economy showed positive growth in GDP and market valuation recovery beginning in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Without NCUA’s numbers, credit unions were in the dark about how a mutual solution might be developed to minimize loss using the collaborative financial tools of the CLF and NCUSIF.

Late Reporting and Changing the NCUSIF’s Accounting Standard

Until 2009, “the NCUSIF historically prepared its financial statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”), based on standards issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”), the private sector standards setting body.”

The issue following this standard was whether US Central and or Wescorp, conserved in March,  must be consolidated with the NCUSIF under the Variable Interest Entity (VIE) rule. As a subsequent event and prior to the completion of the December 2008 audit, the VIE presentation needed to be resolved. As stated in their audit, this situation was one indication that NCUA did not fully grasp the consequences of their actions.

The resolution of this was described in the audit notes for 2008:

It was concluded that for 2008 the NCUSIF would be the primary beneficiary of certain identified VIEs based on variable interests held by the NCUSIF at December 31, 2008, and therefore, the NCUSIF would have been required to consolidate such VIEs in its financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2008. However, based on the actions discussed below, it was concluded that the TCCUSF would be the primary beneficiary of these same VIEs based on variable interests held by the TCCUSF at December 31, 2009.

The shift in primary beneficiary from 2008 to 2009 was the result of the June 18, 2009, actions of the NCUA Board to transfer the legal obligations related to CCUs from the NCUSIF to the TCCUSF. Such actions relieved the NCUSIF for the costs and related obligations of stabilizing the CCU system, as provided by Public Law 111-22, which was enacted May 20, 2009.

This change in reporting entity has been applied retrospectively to 2008. Accordingly, the accompanying financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2008 do not reflect the consolidation of any CCUs.

Avoiding Private Auditing Standard Requirements

To avoid VIE accounting requirements, NCUA in its September 16, 2010 public board meeting adopted federal GAAP.  These are excerpts of this discussion:

Mary Ann Woodson, the agency’s CFO at the time: The purpose of this action is to request Board approval for the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund to adopt accounting standards promulgated by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board, also known as FASAB. These standards are also commonly referred to as Federal GAAP.

The Share Insurance Fund currently applies Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, standards. These accounting standards are used by commercial businesses in keeping their books and records and in preparing their financial statements.

On June 17, 2010, the NCUA Board adopted FASAB accounting standards for the Temporary Corporate Credit Union Stabilization Fund. Since then, we have gained more experience with FASAB and we have seen firsthand that FASAB standards more appropriately meet the financial reporting requirements of the NCUSIF and its stakeholders. Also, FASAB is the preferred standard for federal entities. . .

Debbie Matz, then NCUA Chair: So, if we had switched to this before last year, we wouldn’t have had the long drawn-out issue with the auditors that required us to meet with FASB in order to get a clean audit opinion at the end of last year, but it would have eliminated the inconsistencies and vagaries that created that situation?

Mary Ann Woodson: Certainly it would have helped. Yes.

Debbie Matz: Well, then I support it. Thank you.

Both auditing firms commented that NCUA did not understand or follow basic auditing procedures whichever standard was in place:

The 2008 and 2009 NCUSIF audits  released on June 10 and 11, 2010 included auditor’s comments on accounting deficiencies. The 2008 Deloitte audit reported “material weakness” in NCUA’s failure to “properly identify the appropriate accounting treatment under Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities with respect to its variable interests in certain corporate credit unions.”

KPMG’s 2009 audit reported a “significant deficiency.”  The SIF, the report states, “does not have sufficient staff resources with the experience in technical accounting and reporting requirements that the entity requires to consistently perform certain internal control activities, particularly those related to the preparation and review of the financial statements. . . The SIF does not have procedures in place that require review and approval of the journal entries and related supporting documentation.”

Adopting a Misleading Accounting Standard

In this 2010 board meeting NCUA  adopted federal GAAP as the “preferred standard for federal entities.” But it did so only for the NCUSIF in order to avoid certain disclosures according to Matz’s question. However the Operating Fund and CLF continued and are still audited using FASB GAAP.

The problems adopting Federal GAAP are much greater than VIE disclosures. First the NCUSIF is not a federal entity, but rather a cooperatively funded capital reserve for the credit union system. There are no federal appropriations or funds involved.

Investments are in Treasury securities, but that does not make the NCUSIF a government entity any more than it would a credit union holding the same investments. The NCUSIF is totally privately funded and only for credit union system use.

The Federal GAAP income statements and balance sheets are confusing and misleading for credit unions. As explained by Woodson, the agency’s then CFO: “Under FASB, or commercial GAAP, the focus is on netting revenue against expenses for either a net income or a net loss. Under FASAB, or Federal GAAP, the focus is on the cost to government. So we start with the costs and reduce that amount by any revenue earned, to get to the total cost of operations, or said another way, the net cost to the government.”

Under FASAB the focus is on separating transactions within the government from those with the public.  But all NCUSIF transactions are with credit unions, that is, the public.

The FASAB balance sheet presentation and income are prepared to show these two activities, but are totally irrelevant to how the NCUSIF operates. The numbers presented in this manner are at best confusing and at worst, misleading.

For example, under Federal GAAP the fund’s retained earnings are described as the Cumulative Result of Operations. This description includes unrealized gains and losses on the NCUSIF investment portfolio which can  over or understate actual equity significantly.

In the NCUSIF fiscal 2020 results using Federal accounting, it reported a $500 million increase in its net position to a total of $5.1 billion. However, the actual net income from operations was only $32.9 million. This  number is nowhere in the Federal GAAP statements-but reported on Slide 3 in the NCUA’s staff December 31 presentation to the board using private GAAP. This substantial  difference in the increase in total equity of $400 million versus operating income of $33 million is due primarily to including additional  unrealized gains in NCUSIF investments from the prior year.

NCUA staff reports the total of the federal Cumulative Result in its slides.  But when calculating the NOL, staff eliminates any unrealized gains or losses  highlighting the confusion between the two standards when presenting financial performance.

The difference in NCUSIF’s actual retained earnings and “cumulative results of operations,” varies by hundreds of millions each year (2008-2020) as shown below.

However the most serious defect in federal GAAP is that  “fiduciary assets” are non-governmental and therefore not  on the NCUSIF’s balance sheet.  These are all of the AME’s  including the corporate estates which total  billions.  They are in effect off the books.

As stated at the top of the AME financials issued by NCUA, the amounts are unaudited.  Under private GAAP these amounts would be audited and included  on the NCUSIF’s balance sheet.  Currently the amounts for corporate and natural person AME’s are presented  in Federal GAAP as “net”  receivable assets subject to various accounting and income recognition rules.

Using the Proper Accounting Standard in a Consistent, Transparent Manner is Critical

To evaluate the NCUSIF’s financial design and capital adequacy, an essential first step is adopting private FASB accounting. This is how NCUA staff routinely presents the board with NCUSIF slide updates—except for the balance sheet entry showing “cumulative results of operations.”

Returning to this accounting standard will help all users more easily understand when monitoring the fund. It will:

  • Present financial performance in a standard balance sheet and income statement format readily understood and monitored by credit unions;
  • Restore the NOL calculation as was done from 1984 through 2000. The misleading recognition of the 1% deposit, citing a billing delay, is inconsistent with credit unions’ standing legal liability and misstates the fund’s actual NOL status at yearend.
  • Bring more rigorous consistency to estimates of loss provision expense. Since 2009 there has been no relation between the provision expense and actual cash losses.
  • Shed greater insight into NCUA’s decisions including the management of its investment portfolio, the AME’s and the probability of premiums or dividends at yearend.

These accounting distortions have contributed to questions about the fund’s sufficiency and flexibility in a low rate environment. This is an important issue in the current environment. But it can only be analyzed if there is a rigorous, objective and consistent presentation of performance.

The fund’s revenue is primarily dependent on the yield on the investment portfolio. But whether that will be a factor causing a premium depends on two other critical events:

  1. What is the expected level of actual losses to the fund (versus the seemingly arbitrary loss provision expense)?
  2. Will the NCUA’s ever growing  expenditures transferred to the NCUSIF be brought into better alignment with proportionate share of state insured credit union risk?

Tomorrow I will present the NCUSIF’s cumulative performance from 2008-2020 to address the question, does the unique NCUSIF design still work after the two worst financial crises since the Great Depression?

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NCUA Asks CU Owners for Guidance on Reserve Level in NCUSIF

Would a credit union ever seek members’ advice on its capital level? For example, should the net worth range be held at the “well capitalized” level of 7-8%? Or raised to match the industry average, currently 10.5%? Or, in this time of recovery, add an extra 1% for unforeseen risks such as the COVID shutdown of 2020?

It would be highly unusual, even unique, for credit union to do this. Now NCUA has asked credit unions to provide this guidance for the NCUSIF. In May, the board approved a request for comment from credit unions for setting the normal operating level (NOL). That ratio, expressed in basis points, determines the retained earnings over and above each credit union’s 1% capital deposit.

Deadline is July 26

This could be the most important action credit unions take to shape the future of their unique cooperative fund. This decision is so consequential that this week’s blogs will focus only on this topic. Using the fund’s data from 2008-2013, I will provide background, facts and a dynamic Xcel spread sheet to help credit unions in their responses. The comment period closes in just two weeks on the 26th.

All comment letters are available here. To date only one is posted.

The Issue

The traditional range of the NOL ratio has been the 1% deposit plus another of .2 to .3% in fund reserves. In 2017 the Board raised the NCUSIF’s upper NOL limit to 1.39%, supposedly as a temporary measure after merging the TCCUSF’s assets and contingent liabilities. That top limit was reduced to 1.38 in 2020.

The NOL top limit had always been 1.30 from 1984 until 2017. All fund balances above this cap must be paid to the fund’s credit union owners as a dividend. That is the legal requirement as outlined in NCUA’s comment request: “The Insurance Fund’s calendar year-end equity ratio is part of the statutory basis to determine whether the NCUA must make a distribution to insured credit unions. The Act states “the Board shall effect a pro rata distribution to insured credit unions after each calendar year if, as of the end of that calendar year . . . the Fund’s equity ratio exceeds the Normal Operating Level.”

For example for six consecutive years, 1995 through 2000, the NCUSIF paid over $500 million in dividends as the year-end equity ratio continually exceeded the 1.3% cap.

At December, 2020, NCUSIF’s $4.665 bn retained earnings were .318% of yearend insured shares of $1.468 tr. If the NOL cap had been 1.30 (not 1.38) credit unions would have received a dividend of $264 million.

Chairman Harper Has Stated His Views

Before becoming Chair, Todd Harper was outspoken in his admiration and desire to bring FDIC’s revenue options to the NCUSIF. He repeated this in a statement, NCUSIF Improvements, before the House Financial Services Committee in May, 2021. Here is an excerpt of his views:

“ . . .under current law, the NCUA does not have the appropriate flexibility necessary to manage the Share Insurance Fund in a manner consistent with the growing size and complexity of the credit union industry, as well as with broader national financial stability goals.

To address these concerns, the NCUA . . . requests the following legislative changes:

  • Increase the Share Insurance Fund’s capacity by removing the 1.50 percent statutory ceiling on its capitalization;
  • Remove the limitation on assessing premiums when the equity ratio exceeds 1.30 percent, granting the NCUA Board discretion on the assessment of premiums; and
  • Institute a risk-based premium system.

These recommended changes, if enacted, would allow the NCUA Board to build, over time, enough retained earnings capacity in the Share Insurance Fund to effectively manage a significant insurance loss without impairing credit unions’ contributed capital deposits in the Share Insurance Fund. Moreover, these changes would generally bring the NCUA’s statutory authority over the Share Insurance Fund more in line with the statutory authority over the operations of the Deposit Insurance Fund.”

Harper Seeks More Credit Union Money

Each basis point above the traditional cap of 1.3 is easy to calculate in dollars. With insured shares approaching $2.0 trillion, a single basis point adds $200 million to the fund.

Harper’s statement contains no facts or analysis supporting his legislative recommendations. His logic is only to cite the FDIC, a very different financial model. The bank’s fund has been insolvent several times since the NCUSIF redesign in 1984 ending the credit union’s premium-based system.

The reason Congress changed the FDIC’s operations in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act was because it failed again in the 2008/2009 crisis. Congress kept the same design and as typical of a government solution, mandated that FDIC just collect more money from banks.

Harper posits three NCUSIF shortcomings: it is not sufficiently funded for times of stress; there needs be greater flexibility in financial management; and pricing should not be the same for every credit union–credit unions with more risk should be paying more. The bottom line is he wants to collect more money via premiums , an option now limited by law by the 1.3% cap.

The Real NCUSIF Failing

All three changes asserted by Harper are without supporting documentation. An analysis of the past thirteen years includes the two most recent financial crises and suggests a very different shortcoming. The NCUSIF has not lacked total resources, liquidity, or financial flexibility (premiums) but rather verifiable processes to estimate loan losses. For both specific and general loss provisions, NCUA has repeatedly overfunded the allowance account by hundreds of millions.

The most catastrophic example of this failing is NCUA’s estimates when initiating five corporate liquidations in September 2010. The projected credit union funded deficit from NCUA, versus actual outcomes to date, are more than $20 billion in error.

In later blogs, I will give examples of these loss exaggerations. These errors are even more pronounced when staff presents its modeling options to the Board in its annual NOL review.

NCUA’s efforts to remove these legal guard rails–NOL caps, mandatory dividends, external audits, limits on premiums—were anticipated. Spending more money is the default government solution. The NCUSIF and its co-op partner the CLF were tools to resolve problems collaboratively with the industry, not expense them away via liquidations.

Credit unions were put on notice by Chairman Callahan that the fund was now theirs, but they would have to monitor just like any investment.

The NCUSIF is Successful Despite NCUA’s Misjudgments

The strength and flexibility of the NCUSIF’s underwriting design has so far held against the agency’s habitual over-expensing ethos. There is a second concern. The accounting presentations are not provided in a timely, consistent and transparent manner-especially during high stakes decisions. A tool like the NCUSIF is only as effective as the quality of the data provided users.

Further blogs this week will cover these two issues and others:

  1. The Problems converting from private GAAP to federal GAAP in NCUSIF accounting. The importance of restoring private GAAP FASB accounting practices so the fund’s financial presentations are accurate, consistent and understandable.
  2. Facts versus fictions. How the NCUSIF’s 2008-2020 financial performance validates its financial design and the different approach in NCUA’s modeling outputs.
  3. Every Credit union’s NCUSIF calculator. This spread sheet is a simple, easy to use tool, that anyone can use to forecast the NCUSIF’s annual outcome and estimate whether a premium or dividend is probable at yearend.
  4. Raising Your Voice. Preparing Comments in light of the agency’s response to credit unions in 2017 when the cap was first raised above 1.30.

These blogs will provide interested persons historical context and the most recent data to review when submitting their responses.

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The Declaration of Interdependence

Richard Blanco’s mother was seven months pregnant when his parents left Cuba for Madrid, where he was born.  Forty-five days later they departed for America.

Technically his full name is Ricardo de Jesús Blanco Sánchez Valdez Molina.

His parents so wanted to come to the US they named their son Ricardo, after Richard Nixon.  Jesus, because his mom on the flight from Cuba said, “If we make it alive, her(sic) middle name will be Jesus.”

And as a poet he calls himself Richard to contrast the Anglo and the white Blanco.  He is a lifelong civil engineer.  He read a poem at Barrack Obama’s 2013 inaugural, the first Latino to do so.

A Poet’s Political Conscience

He was moved to write Declaration after hearing Senator Jeff Flake’s speech in the Senate on  America’s divisions in 2017.  The Senator said in part:

“I rise today with no small measure of regret — regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse, regret because of the coarseness of our leadership, regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by ‘our,’ I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and accommodation of the unacceptable to end.”

In this prose-poetry format, Blanco selects phrases from the Declaration of 1776 and contrasts these with observations about the present.  He concludes with the self-evident truth: We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.

             Declaration of Interdependence

By Richard Blanco

Such has been the patient sufferance…

We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line. We’re her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page through a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and bruised.

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury…

We’re her second job serving an executive absorbed in his Wall Street Journal at a sidewalk café shadowed by skyscrapers. We’re the shadows of the fortune he won and the family he lost. We’re his loss and the lost. We’re a father in a coal town who can’t mine a life anymore because too much and too little has happened, for too long.

A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…

We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and graffitied truths. We’re a street in another town lined with royal palms, at home with a Peace Corps couple who collect African art. We’re their dinner-party talk of wines, wielded picket signs, and burned draft cards. We’re what they know: it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and organic corn.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress…

We’re the farmer who grew the corn, who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re his TV set blaring news having everything and nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. We’re a black teenager who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough. We’re the blast of the bullet leaving the gun. We’re the guilt and the grief of the cop who wished he hadn’t shot.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…

We’re the dead, we’re the living amid the flicker of vigil candlelight. We’re in a dim cell with an inmate reading Dostoevsky. We’re his crime, his sentence, his amends, we’re the mending of ourselves and others. We’re a Buddhist serving soup at a shelter alongside a stockbroker. We’re each other’s shelter and hope: a widow’s fifty cents in a collection plate and a golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for a cure.

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

We’re the cure for hatred caused by despair. We’re the good morning of a bus driver who remembers our name, the tattooed man who gives up his seat on the subway. We’re every door held open with a smile when we look into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon. We’re the moon. We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.

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Warren Buffet’s Wisdom for Coops

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Buffet’s phrase would appear to state a fundamental truth about cooperatives.  After all, cooperative results are meant to be paid forward to benefit future generations.

As I follow credit unions, other interpretations of his observation are apparent. Here are some:

Different Views of Shade Trees

Some believe the trees should be cut down and sold for firewood.  Others want the trees removed because it restricts their view.

Some did not notice the tree until they were in its shade.  The conclusion is they were the ones who did the planting.

Occasionally, some uproot their neighbors’ trees to replant nearby to expand their shade.

When asked to help plant a tree for others, the response is, “there is no need, just sit in our shade.”

The government inspectors come to see how the trees are doing.  They direct certain limbs to be cut down because they interfere with the power lines. They believe no new trees are to be planted. The existing canopy gives all the shade the community needs.  Besides it takes too long for a sapling to grow big enough to provide real shade.

Instead of a cooperative forest passed to future generations, the landscape slowly becomes a level field.  All the trees are privately owned, and the communities’ open spaces require members to pay a fee to sit in the shade.

Buffet’s question:  Are today’s credit unions planting trees or living off a forest created by others?

 

 

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Taxi Medallions in the American Cooperative System

In February 2020 when the NCUA board voted to sell over 4,500 credit union members’ taxi medallion loans to a private hedge fund, it broke faith with the borrowers and the credit union model authorized by Congress.

Cooperatives are intended to be a financial option different from the market-driven, for profit business models.

Yesterday’s blog, “Low Balling Price to Win Market Share,” described the Uber/Lyft business model’s use of venture capital to underprice the regulated cab industry fares to achieve market dominance.  One reader commented:

The “destroy the competition” at any cost business model is capitalism at its most ruthless point (and it’s what China is doing right now too).  I’m a capitalist but running the competition out of town with an unprofitable business model backed by a war-chest of reserves is poor form.  Don’t know what to do about it; legislating it away may do more harm than good. 

But that legislation is already on the books.  First by state charters, and then in Congress (in 1934), consumers and groups were given an option to fight predatory practices by forming not-for-profit, member-owned financial services.  The question is whether the leaders of the system–regulators and credit union CEO’s–believe in this cooperative difference today.

Cooperative Ownership Supports Individual Owners

To recruit back their driver business partners, Uber and Lyft have reportedly paid incentives of $250 million and $100 million to entice them to return to their platforms.  But this time these price incentives are being passed through in the fares which are as  much as 40% higher.

What made the credit union financing of medallions special was that it gave drivers the chance to buy a medallion and become an owner, not just a worker.

A person familiar with the medallion financing industry described this credit union role as follows:

The decline of the 75-year history of the taxi industry is very complicated.

 But one thing remains true.  “Ownership” was key in its success and if the medallion rises from the dead, that will be why. In America, it is better to own than be owned by your employer-no matter how benevolent that employer might be. That is why immigrants of many colors and nationalities turned to the taxi industry.

 The incentives the ride share companies gave passengers and drivers when they were initially focused on destroying “Yellow” are now gone.

 The medallion buying market is now only owner-operators, so investors and speculation are gone.

As long as the purchase price affords the “new” owner the chance to earn what they earned as a worker, they will choose the owner option.

 Cooperative financing gave these members a way to create their own business-the American dream.  Credit union lending has always intended to enable individual empowerment for productive purpose.

NCUA’s sale of the members’ loans to a hedge fund seeking control of a significant share of the NYC medallion market undercut this core purpose. Several credit union and borrower groups with firsthand experience managing these portfolios asked to provide options and were ignored by NCUA.

If borrowers had been given the payment options based on balances similar to the amount the agency received from the sale, the member workout transitions could have been accelerated and future values enhanced for both NCUA and these borrowers.  But NCUA decided to wash its hands and walk away.

The Credit Union Way or Not?

Time and again credit unions have demonstrated their ability to act in borrowers’ best interests even when this means reducing the credit union’s bottom line or using reserves.   The industry’s wide-spread fee waivers, deferrals, refinancing and just being there for members during Covid is the latest in a history of such actions.

Unlike for-profit firms, cooperative structure provides a shield against the ever-present market pressures for earnings.  Patience provides for both individual circumstances and market cycles to play out so decisions are not made when events seem at their worst.

Cooperative patience is a valuable capability.  It means the industry can act counter cyclically in a downturn by keeping loan windows open and giving members options to defer or even reduce payments.  Even now, there are  reports that the “Yellow” taxi option is making a comeback versus the technology disrupters.

But if this unique advantage is not understood and used by regulators or credit union leaders, then credit unions will end up responding to crises no differently than their banking competitors.  That is not what Congress intended.  It is not what America needs.  It is not in the member-owners’ interest. That banking approach would violate both cooperative design and values.

 

 

 

 

 

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What Credit Unions Can Learn from Morris Plan Banks

In justifying whole bank purchases credit union CEOs will reference learning from their competitor’s experiences and banking knowledge. Several areas include expanded commercial loan opportunities, entry into new markets and adding staff with  different expertise.

Trying to beat the competition by becoming the competition has always been a dubious strategy. Moreover, the example of early competition from the Morris Plan banks suggests credit unions will be more successful developing their own unique competencies.

Credit union success was never guaranteed. In fact, one of the earliest and largest competitors for the untapped consumer credit market grew much faster and was far more consequential than the slowly emerging credit union system. That is, until the 1934 passage of the FCU Act ushered in a new era of cu expansion.

Morris Plan Banks

In 1910, attorney Arthur J. Morris (1881–1973) opened the Fidelity Savings and Trust Company in Norfolk, Virginia.

The Virginia lawyer, was troubled that a securely employed workman, seeking a small loan, was denied access to credit from local banks and forced to borrow from loan sharks. Morris thought that a country that denied bank loans to a large part of its population had a “weak spot” in its banking system. Morris studied the various banking laws in the U.S. in the hopes that some type of “banking institution could be evolved that would correct the existing evils and supply credit to the needy”

Under a concept called the “Morris Plan” he offered small loans to working people. In this approach would-be borrowers had to submit references from two people of like character and earnings power to prove the borrower’s creditworthiness. Repayment of the loan was made through the weekly purchase of Installment Thrift Certificates equal to the face value of the loan, less origination and investigative fees.

Morris Plan Banks expanded relying on state charters just as did the nascent credit union movement. By 1931, there were 109 Morris Plan banks operating in 142 cities with an annual loan volume about $220,000,000.

In a November 23, 1931, TIME magazine personnel announcement, the industry’s two decades of success and growth were described as follows:

“Walter W. Head, past president of American Bankers Assn., was elected president of Morris Plan Corp. of America, succeeding Austin L. Babcock. Morris Plan Corp. has large stock holdings in all the Morris Plan banks, the largest industrial banking system in the U. S. In the last 21 years these banks loaned $1,750,000,000 to 7,000,000 people, and now do about $200,000,000 annual business with 800,000 customers.”

Morris Plan banks pioneered the use of automotive financing through arrangements between the Morris Plan Company of America, the holding company for Morris Plan banks, and the Studebaker Corporation. In 1917 through the subsidiary Morris Plan Insurance Society, credit life insurance was offered to pay off any outstanding loan balance if the borrower died. Any insurance left over went to the borrower’s estate.

In their description of Morris Plan banks, authors Phillips and Mushinski offer one explanation for model’s success versus credit unions:

“The Morris Plan structure was more attuned to the individuality of typical Americans than were credit unions.

“It should also be noted that the Morris Plan was not without critics, especially from the Russell Sage Foundation which viewed the lending procedure to be misleading at best, and at worst, an attempt to defraud the borrowers. Hence, many viewed the profit-seeking Morris Plan institutions as little better, and in some respects worse, than loan-sharks.”

Morris Plan Banks vs Credit Unions’ Growth

Morris Plan banks began the same year as credit unions. In just two decades, by 1931, they became the leading provider of financial options for consumers.

The following slides summarize this state chartered, for-profit enterprise.

1. Begun by a lawyer to meet the need for unsecured personal credit.

2. Innovative legal structure incubated in the state chartering system.

3. Loans were made based on character, for a good purpose with at least two cosigners of similar economic standing.

4. Morris plan banks’ annual loan volume in 1931 is estimated at over $200 million. The state-chartered credit union system reported just over $40 million.

5. Morris Plan banks failed during the Depression. Many converted or were sold to commercial banks which took consumer deposits and had broader lending options.

Today the descendant of this banking model is the Industrial Loan Company (ILC) state chartered, FDIC insured banks that primarily serve as specialty lenders.

Morris Plan institutions relied on wholesale funding and stock subscriptions. Credit unions which offered savings options and consumer loans quickly became the preferred option for members and communities in the Depression. Their non-profit cooperative design, self-help appeal and local leadership created a positive reputation and loyal members following numerous failures in the banking system following Roosevelt’s bank holiday in March 1933.

Some Reflections for Credit Unions from the Morris Plan Experience

  • Being first to prove a market need and establishing a dominant position does not guarantee ongoing success. Second movers can create a long-term advantage.
  • Growth requires innovation and staying in touch with a market’s needs.
  • The more flexible the institutional model, the greater the chance of sustainability;
  • The Credit Union system took on a new wave of expansion and credibility when a federal charter option became available—Morris Plan banks were dependent on state-by-state legislation;
  • Values and perceptions matter. Although Morris’ instinct was to serve the unbanked, the for-profit structure created a public perception of conflicting purposes.
  • Dramatic or sudden changes/crises in the economic, social, or political environment can lead to demise of models developed in another era.

Buying Used Up Models?

As credit unions pursue whole bank acquisitions, are they buying “tired” business models built with different values and goals? Are these credit unions giving up the advantages of cooperative design and innovation attempting to purchase scale? Will combining competitors’ experiences (and customers) with the credit union tax exemption create an illusion of financial opportunity that fails to prove out when evaluated years down the road?

Two decades ago, the prophets of cooperative doom were selling charter conversions, first to a mutual option and then later, going public with stock. The pitch was: more capital flexibility, no common bond restraints and expanded asset and investment options. And oh, you could also make a lot of money if the former credit union went public.

Between 30-35 credit unions bought into this vision of future financial nirvana. Today only one institution remains, still a mutual whose growth has trailed its cooperative peers since the conversion took place. But that is a story for another day.

We know the fate of the Morris Plan banking model and the “consultants” siren calls to convert to another financial charter. We don’t know if bank purchases will indeed add value for members or their co-op.

But we can learn one thing from history—if these purchases do not create a stronger cooperative, the credit union’s future may have just been attenuated in this effort to induce growth by paying out members’ collective wealth to bank owners.

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The Key to Cooperative Success

Everyone has a different perspective on the advantages of cooperative design.  For some it is self-help and self-financing.  For others, member ownership.  The tax advantage creating free capital. Cooperative values. Collaboration. Etc.

One CEO described his operational priority that states this critical factor most clearly:

Invest in your owner’s agenda and remember, it’s outside your own. The success of your members is the only chance you have at success.

 I would add that everything else is just becoming the competition.

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What Bubble?

Much professional and political debate is occurring as to whether the real economy’s outlook, measured by GDP, and stock market values are aligned.

One source of uncertainty is whether the increase of fiscal spending will lead to greater inflation (more money chasing fewer goods) or just a temporary adjustment before returning to some steady equilibrium.  That is, a “normal” of both GDP growth (3%) and of inflation, around 2-3%.

Some facts to throw into the confusion.

The current price earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index stands at 40 times or so.  This is up from a same index’s P/E ratio of 23X one year ago.  Historically the ratio hovers in the mid to high teens over an extended economic cycle.

Tesla is priced today at a P/E ratio of 204 times.   Over the past twelve months of trailing earnings, its P/E of 128X is eight times the domestic auto industry’s similar trailing P/E of 16.5X.

The business pages are full of daily stories of meme stocks such as AMC or GME where pricing bears no relationship to actual performance.  Irrational exuberance?  Retail investors with too much time and surplus cash on hand? Historically low interest rates pushing up the value of assets such as homes and used cars? Bit coin and other cyber currencies–the wave of the future for protecting wealth or just a giant Ponzi scheme where another buyer proves the greater fool theory of investing?  Until there are no fools left!

How Should Credit Unions Respond?

Some members, those with retirement, savings or other assets in stocks and real estate are probably feeling confident about their financial situation. Especially if they just refinanced at lower rates.

Those without these assets, or just holding savings accounts earning .10-.50 basis points are undoubtedly less sanguine about their situation.  Living on fixed incomes with prices rising on everything can raise anxiety about being left behind.

No one knows the future.  Most forecasts are based on past data and current assumptions about the environment.  But learning from these past forecasts might just help us navigate current uncertainties.

The 1978-1979 Inflation Takes Off

In 1978 the economy was experiencing dramatic rises in short term rates and inflation was a constant source of governmental attention.   In that year the money market mutual funds began to attract consumer deposits from all financial intermediaries whose rates were fixed by government regulation: generally 5% for banks and 51/4% for S&L’s on passbook accounts.  No interest was paid on checking–prohibited by regulation.   No depository money market accounts permitted. All CD rates and terms were similarly government controlled. Federal credit union rates were capped at 7%.  Share drafts were us just barely introduced although all Rhode Island state charters offered NOW accounts and paid interest on them.

Illinois chartered credit unions operated with a 12% loan usury ceiling in place since first the first act was passed in the 1920’s.   The Department issued updated guidelines for certificate accounts trying to help credit unions remain competitive if they had sufficient earnings.   I can remember, as Credit Union Supervisor, offering Ed Callahan, the Director of DFI, my considered opinion that rates would never rise about 12%.  They had never done so in the past. That loan ceiling reflected the collective judgments of generations of lawmakers and policy analysts that gave the number an aura of human observational certainty like the law of gravity.  What could be closer to a natural law than paying simple interest on loans at 1% per month?

Ed didn’t argue with my facts or logic.  He only replied: “Don’t ever say never.”  Meaning that when someone asserts something cannot change, be careful.  One year later his comment was proven true, and the economy and all financial institutions started responding to Treasury yields that would eventually soar to the mid-teens and 30-year mortgages became unavailable at any rate.

Consumers transferred billions from deposits to money market mutual funds which could pay these higher rates.  This disintermediation was the ultimate straw triggering complete deregulation of the depository institution industry.

Credit unions transitioned this financial earthquake by continuing one critical strategy-serve the member well and good results will follow.  A credit union advantage is being partially shielded from the everyday pressures of the market and the power of stock price on performance and management behavior.

Some data today suggests that certain parts of the economy are overpriced.  Others believe there are still bargains to be had and don’t want to miss out on the action.  It can be an entertaining game to watch, but not one credit unions are supposed to play.  Fortune tellers can only make a living if someone believes in their crystal ball.

Resist  the allure of future predictions and focus on getting ever better for members in the present.

 

 

 

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Intergenerational Thinking and Co-op Design

The concept of paying forward is inherent in the credit union model.  Current leadership begins with a legacy of common wealth inherited from previous efforts.  The assumption is that the current generation will in turn pass an even greater legacy to their children’s children.

This is not the performance standard dictated for profit making firms in a market economy.   Rather the inexorable force of the invisible hand drives a firm’s stock price.   Success or shortfalls, are measured quarterly against explicit annual performance expectations.

What Will our Descendants Thank Us For?

Credit unions were founded with a different ethic of success.  The member ownership allows co-ops to play “the long game.” Performance encompasses obligations for the common good of members and their communities.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was a leading English art critic of the Victorian era.  He was an art patron, draughtsman, watercolorist, philosopher, social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as architecture, myth, literature, education, botany and political economy.

His vision for human enterprise uses an architectural metaphor which I believe embraces this unique, intergenerational scope of cooperative design:

“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our fathers did for us.”

 

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Two Reflections from Memorial Day

Opposition to the Vietnam war on many college campuses led to the cancellation of ROTC programs.  Subsequently the draft was ended with all branches of the military now relying on volunteers to fill their ranks.

One observer commented on the fewer ROTC programs and the elimination of the draft as incentives for college graduates to serve in an all-volunteer military.  He foresaw a possible outcome as follows:  Societies fall to folly when they draw distinct lines between their warriors and scholars. What this ultimately leads to is society’s thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools. 

What if we are called to serve and fail to answer?

The heydays of credit union charters began in the Great Depression with passage of the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934.   Post WWII saw another upsurge in new chartering activity.  From 1949-1970 between 500-700 new FCU charters were issued per year.

By yearend 1978, when NCUA became an independent agency, 23,278 federal charters had been granted of which 12,769 (55%) were still operating.

Many factors affected this chartering explosion.   One was the social ethic of the Greatest Generation.  The cooperative values of self-help, local leadership and community service were closely aligned with the ethos of the generation forged by depression and world war.

Some writers believe this capacity for social responsibility has been superseded in current generations by a more individualistic focus,  personal independence  and financial success.

A guest editorial by Margaret Renkl on this change of values was published Memorial Day, May 31, 2021 in the New York Times.

My question is whether this attitude might contribute to the virtual absence of new charters in this century.   There have been 193 FCU’s in first 20 years of this century, or fewer than 10 per year.  Here are several excerpts of the writer’s thinking:

“Young men of my father’s generation grew up during wartime and generally expected to serve when their turn came. No generation since has felt the same way. There are compelling reasons for that shift — the protracted catastrophe in Vietnam not least — but I’m less interested in why it happened than in what it tells us about our country now. What does it mean to live in a nation with no expectation for national service? With no close-hand experience of national sacrifice? . . .

 The need for some nonmartial way to nurture communitarian qualities is more urgent now than ever. We have lately been reminded of the absolute necessity for Americans to be motivated by warm fellow feeling across divides of region, race, class, politics, religion, age, gender, or ability; to cultivate a sense of common purpose; to make sacrifices for the sake of others. And that reminder came in the form of watching what happens when such qualities are absent, even anathema, in whole regions of the country. . .

If Vietnam exploded the unquestioned commitment to national service, the coronavirus pandemic should have been the very thing to bring it back.

That it did exactly the opposite tells us something about who we are as human beings, and who we are as a nation. There is more to mourn today than I ever understood before.” 

The Question for Credit Unions

To the extent that our society has lost capacity to “nurture its communitarian” responsibilities, how does this affect the cooperative model?  Credit unions rely on volunteers. Their greatest strength is the fabric of relationships they cultivate with members and their communities.   Has the model lost its way as a new generation of leaders takes control without a link or even knowledge of the qualities that created the institutions they inherit?

Have credit unions abandoned their capacity to cultivate a sense of common purpose; to make sacrifices for the sake of others now that they have achieved financial sufficiency and can stand apart from their roots?

Is credit union leadership today susceptible to the social folly described by the first writer?