NAFCU beating the drum on CU biz lending

Nov. 23, 2009 – NAFCU President Fred Becker urged anew on the need to increase the credit union member business loan cap in letters to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

Both, along with Rep. Nydia Velásquez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-N.C., were participants in last week’s Treasury/Small Business Administration forum on small business lending. Becker wrote all four urging steps to help credit unions do more to help small businesses.

Becker praised the administration’s effort to include credit unions in its plan for facilitating low-cost capital to lenders for small-business lending purposes. Writing Velásquez and Landrieu, he urged anew that all credit unions, not just those certified as community development financial institutions, be provided access.

Becker also told Geithner and Warner that the current 12.25 percent-of-assets cap on credit union member business loans blocks credit unions’ efforts to do more to serve small businesses. He urged support for raising that cap to 25 percent of assets.

In other comments, the NAFCU president reiterated support for H.R. 3854, the Small Business Financing and Investment Act of 2009, and the Credit Union Small Business Lending Act (introduced by Velázquez in the previous Congress). The latter bill would exempt credit unions participating in SBA programs from the current limit on member business lending.