NCUA to send 10 specialists to help CUs in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (11/10/05)--Next week 10 economic development specialists from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) will be on the ground in New Orleans to assist small and low-income designated credit unions with their recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
According to Region IV (Austin) Acting Director Keith Morton, about 75 people plus NCUA staff attended the agency's "town meeting" Wednesday of organizations and credit unions to address recovery needs. Fifty-nine credit unions were present.
"The next step is to send 10 economic development specialists to work with 38 credit unions that are small or low-income credit unions and assess and indicate what their needs are," he told News Now shortly after the meeting adjourned.
NCUA's Office of Small CU Initiatives is taking the lead on the effort. The specialists will be on the ground next week and will stay two to three weeks, or longer, based on the needs, he said. Each specialist will work with roughly four credit unions in assessing needs and assisting with different operations. They also will work on credit unions' previously identified deficiencies.
The specialists will be filling in for credit union staff who are out of work, or who evacuated and will not return to the area. They will train the credit unions' staff on handling delinquencies, collections, skip tracing and strategic initiatives.
The meeting brought in a number of organizations to help, according to Scott Earl, coordinator of the disaster recovery efforts by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the leagues to assist credit unions affected by the hurricanes.
In addition to CUNA and NCUA, representatives from the Louisiana Credit Union League, African-American Coalition of Credit Unions, the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, the Small Business Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service attended.
Earl noted that about 20 credit unions so far have adopted credit unions through the Adopt-a-Credit Union program. "More than 130 credit unions have offered some assistance to credit unions in the hurricane-damaged region, although not all are in the Adopt-A-CU program," Earl told News Now.
He said that CUNA's and the leagues' Relief Effort and Support of Credit Unions (R.E.S.C.U.) program will soon "push for staffing assistance" for the afflicted credit unions.
"Right now the biggest issue is staffing assistance and employee housing. In Mississippi, employee housing is a bigger issue than staffing. Keesler FCU (in hard-hit Biloxi, Miss.) has 38 employees who are displaced," Earl said. He noted that 175 employees are displaced in Louisiana.
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