Letters to Regulators: NCUA Should Bolster Staff Capacity, Training, Tools, Research & Analysis, and Guidance on Climate-related Financial Risk

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment letter endorsed by The Greenlining Institute and Public Citizen, in response to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)’s request for information on climate-related financial risk.

The letter urges the NCUA to proceed with critical next steps to help credit unions monitor and manage their climate-related financial risks and opportunities, including to: 

  1. Create permanent climate risk staff capacity at the NCUA
  2. Produce tools, toolkits, and educational resources for climate-related risks and green lending opportunities for credit unions and their members
  3. Conduct additional research and systemwide analysis of physical and transition risks to credit unions
  4. Issue climate guidance and incorporate climate risk and green lending opportunities into current supervision, regulation, and consumer financial protection programs through examiner and staff training
  5. Advocate that FSOC and FSOC members act to mitigate the drivers of climate-related financial risk, including financed greenhouse gas emissions, for firms within their respective purviews, given the likely disproportionate impacts of physical risk on credit unions and the communities they serve, relative to larger lenders

View the full technical comment here.