Your Voice.

As a FORUM Credit Union member, your voice is important. FORUM Credit Union actively participates in the legislative process, through the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), to represent the best interests of our Credit Union member/owners.There are important legislative issues being discussed every year that impact the products, services and rates associated with FORUM accounts and services. FORUM speaks up to preserve the cooperative financial model for delivering financial services, and you can too.

Current Action:
CUNA writes to HFSC prior to hearing with Director Calabria on response to COVID-19. The letter discusses how mortgage forbearance, homeowner and rental assistance programs, and the refinance fee increase affect credit unions and their members prior to the House Financial Services Committee hearing re: “Prioritizing Fannie’s and Freddie’s Capital over America’s Homeowners and Renters? A Review of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The letter supported H.R. 6729, the COVID-19 Homeowner Assistance Fund Act, which provides $75 billion for states and territories to prevent mortgage defaults, foreclosures, and displacements of individuals and families experiencing financial hardship due to COVID-19.

Sign up to receive notices from FORUM when key legislative issues are being discussed. Click here and select "YOUR FORUM."
Let your voice be heard on key issues by contacting your legislator about important credit union matters. Contact your legislators here.
Share your Voice with FORUM. If you have credit union related political concerns you would like FORUM to share with CUNA and their advocacy team, let us know!

CUNA Wellness Advocacy During COVID-19:

Below are the ways CUNA has asked Congress to support credit unions in their efforts to help members recover from the pandemic and the associated economic crisis.

Support H.R. 6789/S. 3676 which will create as many as 50,000
jobs and open up $5B in private capital
Support S. 3620 to reduce mortgage defaults, foreclosures
and displacements
Appropriate funds to CDFI and CDRLF to provide relief to low-income communities
Provide liability protection for businesses, including credit unions, serving consumers at this critical time
Extend CLF expansion and TDR restructuring to ensure credit unions and borrowers are protected

Vote in 2020!

The credit union movement fosters an environment of community involvement and is encouraging members to make their voices heard with their vote. Visit creditunionsvote.com, to be sure you're registered to vote, locate your polling place, find the latest updates on changing election dates, and to learn about mail-in and absentee ballot options.

Annual Advocacy Priorities

The ongoing foundation for CUNA's credit union advocacy efforts focuses on the areas below, which represent the input and guidance shared from credit unions across the country.

Regulatory Relief - Credit unions seek to reduce regulatory burden so that credit union members have access to more efficient and affordable financial services. In Washington, CUNA seeks to advance their vision for the CFPB under new leadership.

They want the CFPB to fix the burdensome rules it has implemented over the last several years and to slow the pace of new rules.
They also want the CFPB to transfer supervisory authority of the very large credit unions back to NCUA, retain the Credit Union Advisory Council, and make broader and deeper use of its existing exemption authority.
In individual states, CUNA stands ready to work with leagues in states where attorneys general and legislatures may try to implement overly burdensome regulations.

Overall, credit unions are advocating for Common-Sense Regulation.

Mortgage Lending & Housing
Credit union mortgage lending is a vital path to homeownership for millions of American families. Credit unions need commonsense regulation of consumer-friendly credit union mortgage products and fair and equitable access to a robust secondary market to fulfill their role in our nation's housing market.

Mortgage lending by credit unions is robust and growing, but heavy-handed regulation and a secondary market structure dominated by just a few of the largest banks stifle credit unions' ability to serve their members' mortgage needs.

Expand and Protect Credit Union Opportunities – Working with CUNA's Credit Union Powers Subcommittee, CUNA is working to modernize the Federal Credit Union Act.

They will continue to encourage NCUA to allow credit unions to use supplemental capital to comply with the risk-based capital proposal, using this as a pilot for additional supplemental capital authority.
CUNA wants to work with Congress to find a fix for the government sponsored enterprises that retain access to the secondary market for credit unions.
At the state level, CUNA will work with leagues to pursue legislation that puts more competitive pressures on the federal charter, including interstate branching legislation and field of membership modernization.

Enhance Information Security – Enhancing information security to reduce the impact that merchant data breaches have on credit unions and their members is a top concern and priority. CUNA calls for Congress to:

Treat data privacy as a national security issue, since there have been more than 10,000 data breaches in the U.S. since 2005, compromising nearly 12 billion consumer records. Many of these breaches are being perpetrated by foreign governments, domestic organized crime syndicates and rogue international actors using the data to fund illicit activities;
Fix the weak links in the system, meaning requiring all entities that hold and use consumer data be subject to strong federal data security requirements; and
Set a strong federal standard that preempts state laws, removing the current patchwork of various state laws, regulations and requirements that provide uneven protection and require numerous compliance resources.

Learn more about Data Breaches and ask your Congressional Representative to Stop the Breaches today.

Preserve the Credit Union Tax Status – It’s important to preserve the credit union tax status so that credit union members continue to enjoy not-for-profit cooperative financial services. Preserving the credit union tax status in the recently enacted tax reform law was an enormous victory for credit unions and their members, but there is more work to be completed.

The credit union tax status has nothing to do with institution size or service offerings – it arises from their unique structure as member-owned, not-for-profit organizations that return earnings to average working-class Americans. Both small and large credit unions operate in this way – distinguishing characteristics that have not changed since passage of the Federal Credit Union Act of 1934. Read CUNA's most current white paper on the credit union tax status.

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