I don’t know of any easy answer, but I do believe the banking industry just has to be patient and they will get their wish: credit unions will go away, caused by death due to “regulatoritis.” It is a disease that has become increasingly prevalent over the past ten to twenty years, to the point that it is almost at epidemic proportions.

My thoughts were brought to this recently when I read in a CUNA News Now article about a group of lawyers who are taking on the assignment of reviewing the regulatory burden of credit unions.

I mentioned banks earlier. I was referring to their never ending quest to see credit unions go away. Well many are, regularly, and not because of any pressure that the banks have brought to bear. For the most part I think credit unions are struggling under the weight of regulatory compliance. Most small credit unions (I would consider any CU under $50M small in today’s world) are vulnerable. With finite resources, it becomes tougher to compete in offering services consumers want when there is internal competition for the resource dollars between product and service delivery and regulatory compliance. There is little choice where the priority is. If not in compliance, the CU will have more problems, maybe to the extreme of being out of business.

So what to do, what to do??

It occurs to me that individual credit union stories of the burden/cost of regulatory overkill is a good place to start. Maybe we can help the lawyers along with some insight into real problems and costs associated with said problems.