Nearly 800 credit union officers, board members, staff and vendors are in Tacoma this week at Hotel Murano and the Bicentennial Pavilion to attend the 2011 convention and annual meeting of the Northwest Credit Union Association.
This is the first such gathering of the association – which was recently formed as an amalgamation of credit union associations in Washington and Oregon.
Among the topics under discussion will be risk management, investments, mobile banking, technology trends, regulatory oversight and more.
I spoke Tuesday with some association executives, and I’ll be doing a full report for a story in Sunday’s Business section. One of the topics concerned the ability of credit unions to make commercial loans. Regulators enforce a limit on the amount of money credit unions can loan to businesses – even if the credit union is fully solvent and has the money available. Some executives see this as an unfair disadvantage in the competition between credit unions and banks.
We’ll take a look at that and other issues on Sunday. Meanwhile, if there’s anything you’ve always wanted to know about credit unions, send me an email at c.r.roberts@ thenewstribune.com and I’ll try to find someone with the answer.
C.R. Roberts, staff writer
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