At a Nov. 6 field hearing in Las Vegas, Pahranagat
Valley Federal Credit Union CEO Robin Simmers told a House Small Business
Committee Subcommittee that credit unions face a crisis of creeping
complexity with respect to regulatory burdens that is made more challenging for
small institutions because they do not have the scale of larger institutions
but are required to follow many of the same regulations.
Simmers told the committee that her story is not unlike that
of many small credit union CEOs. Her
credit union has six full time employees, meaning that she wears many hats. “With a team of 6, I am not only the CEO and
Manager, but I serve as the teller, CFO, COO, HR department, Business Lending
Officer, Mortgage Loan Officer and everything in between,” Simmers testified.
The burden her credit union faces deeply affects her
community because Pahranagat Valley Federal Credit Union has been the only
financial institution in town since 2011.
“For a 20 million credit union to adapt the one-size fits
all approach from Washington, simply does not work,” Simmers told the
Committee. “Because of our closeness
with our members, a major regulation designed for implementation at a large
financial institutions simply does not make sense for us.”
The ever increasing regulatory burden for community
financial institutions, Simmers said, is one of the key reasons that we are
losing small credit unions at an “alarming rate.” Her full testimony is available here.