2 minute read

VIEW FROM THE BOARD Happy 60th Birthday, DCUC!

Provided by Bill Birnie, DCUC Board Chair, Frontwave CU president/CEO

As we read in last month’s ALERT, the Defense Credit Union Council (DCUC) was created under the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) in 1963 with 87 credit unions serving 1,327,690 members with $535,218,708 in assets. Early on, Frontwave CU recognized the value of an advocate for military credit unions and joined DCUC in 1966, adding its 15,853 members and $5.7 million in assets. Over the years both organizations have grown. DCUC now has 184 member credit unions that serve over 33 million members with a combined $480 billion in assets, and Frontwave now serves 122,555 members with $1.4 billion in assets.

Advertisement

Advocacy was the reason Frontwave joined DCUC, and advocacy has always been the tip of the spear for DCUC! Throughout six decades of service to member credit unions, DCUC has aggressively tackled a myriad of regulatory, legislative, and policy challenges. Maybe it’s just me but, it feels like the volume of challenges is escalating at an alarming pace and they are coming at us from virtually everywhere! It’s like a “Whack a Mole” game. You whack the FMV mole and up pops moles for ODP, MLA, and interchange…Whack! Whack! Whack! If that’s not hard enough…sometimes, you have to whack the same mole multiple times!

Around this same time last year, I wrote a “View from the Board” article about the tremendously effective work DCUC had done several years prior to garnering Department of Defense (DoD) support for in-kind consideration and, ultimately, no-cost land leases on military installations. Whacked that mole!

Just a few months after I penned that article, Frontwave was working on a new land lease for a branch location on board Camp Pendleton. Frontwave was informed we would be required to pay Fair Market Value for all new and renewing land leases on the four installations we serve. What?! Thought that mole was whacked! Same mole, different hole!

DCUC leapt into action, discovering the misinterpretation of a memo from the Under Secretary of Defense had ultimately led to the belief that credit unions should pay fair market value for land leases. DCUC addressed this issue at the appropriate levels and the requirement to charge fair market value was reversed. Thanks to DCUC’s effective advocacy with the right message at the appropriate level, Frontwave got their no-cost land lease! But even more important than that, because DCUC took the lead at the DoD level, the positive, symbiotic relationship Frontwave had built over the years with installation leadership remained firmly intact. Whacked that mole! Again!

When you’re playing Whack a Mole, you need to expand your vision across the entire board because you never know where the next mole will pop up.

For example, it took years of advocacy to convince the DoD to strike language from interpretative guidance to the Military Lending Act contained in QA #2. Whacked that mole! And yet, here we are four years later battling against initiatives in several states that, in effect, reinstate the harmful impacts of QA #2. Same mole, different hole! DCUC is taking the lead to change language in California Senate Bill 1311, “Military and Veterans Consumer Protection Act of 2022” which was signed into law by the Governor in September 2022. In the most simplistic terms, the Act voids a security interest in a motor vehicle if the loan is exempt from the MLA and the loan finances the purchase of a credit insurance product or a credit-related ancillary product. If your credit union’s military members are anything at all like Frontwave’s beloved Marines, you know the value of GAP insurance! This will take some time to unwind. In the interim, Frontwave now offers its military members an unsecured, interest-free, one-year loan to finance the purchase of GAP insurance.

Happy Birthday, DCUC! Thank you for 60 years of whacking moles on behalf of defense credit unions and the incredible American servicemembers and veterans we are dedicated to serve!

This article is from: