NCUA May Get Its New Chairman This Week

NCUA may have a new Chairman as soon as today, and is still down to one board member.

I sat down with H. Lenwood Brooks, V for the latest episode of With Flying Colors. Lenwood was chief of staff to NCUA Chairman Rodney Hood and is now a managing director at Performance Trust. Like me he knows how the agency works from the inside, and he's watching the same things I am.

We got into some meaty topics:

Whether one board member actually constitutes a quorum under the Federal Credit Union Act remains an open question. Confirming John Crews is a step forward, but it is not the final resolution. The recent Supreme Court removal-power cases have untethered the six-year board term from its original design, and what you're seeing now are OCC-style swings in exam priorities as a result.

We talked about why the credit union seat on the board keeps going to Senate Banking Committee staff. There's an honest case on both sides of that, and Lenwood lays it out in a way I haven't heard anyone else do publicly.

We also talked about what a former regulator watches now: credit quality, growth, and fraud. And something I know every CEO and CFO has lived through but nobody talks about openly. Why a passing comment from an examiner sets off a week of C-suite fire drills, and the one question that stops it.

Full conversation on the latest episode of With Flying Colors, on YouTube, this website, or your favorite podcast app.