The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) issued a letter to federal credit unions regarding the operating fee schedule for 2021. The agency announced the operating fees charged to federal credit unions will decrease by an average of 19.6 percent for the coming year.
“In July 2020, the NCUA board published in the Federal Register several proposed changes to the methodology it uses for computing the annual operating fee paid by federal credit unions and requested public comments about those changes,” NCUA Chair Rodney Hood said in the letter. “At its December meeting, the board approved the proposed changes to: (1) clarify the treatment of the capital project budgets when calculating the operating fees; and (2) clarify the treatment of miscellaneous revenues when calculating the operating fees.
“In addition, the board also approved amending its rule for determining total assets used as the basis for calculating the operating fee by: (1) excluding Paycheck Protection Program loans from the computation of a credit union’s total assets; and (2) using the average of the four quarters’ call report data available at the time the board approves the annual budget to compute total assets instead of using the projected fourth quarter total assets.”
Federal credit unions with total assets of $1 million or less will be exempt from the operating fee. Those with total assets over that threshold will receive an invoice in March. The fee is based on the four-quarter average of total assets reported Dec. 31, 2019, March 30, 2020, June 30, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2020.
The letter also stated all federal credit unions will be notified of any adjustments needed to maintain their share insurance fund capitalization deposits at the statutorily required one percent of insured shares. The deposit amount will be based on insured shares reported as of Dec. 31, 2020.
“Three major factors contribute to the 19.6 percent average decrease in the 2021 operating fee rates: (1) growth in reported credit union assets in 2020; (2) changes to the treatment of the NCUA’s capital budget and miscellaneous revenues approved by the NCUA board on Dec. 18, 2020 as described above, and (3) the change in the computed overhead transfer rate between 2020 and 2021,” the letter stated.
Operating fees are due April 15, 2021.