A corporate credit union, also known as a central credit union, provides services to natural person (consumer) credit unions. In the credit union industry, they are sometimes referred to as "the credit union’s credit union". In the United States, corporate credit unions may either be chartered by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), or under state authority if permitted under that state's financial services laws.
A credit union is a member-owned financial cooperative, controlled by its members and operated on the principle of people helping people, providing its members credit at competitive rates as well as other financial services.
The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) is the independent federal agency created by the United States Congress to regulate, charter, and supervise federal credit unions. With the backing of the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, NCUA operates and manages the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, insuring the deposits of more than 111 million account holders in all federal credit unions and the overwhelming majority of state-chartered credit unions. As of September 2016, there were 5,573 federally insured credit unions, with assets totaling more than $1.38 trillion, and net loans of $957.3 billion.
Corporate credit unions are owned by the credit unions that choose to do business with them and provide short term (Fed Funds) and long term investments (in government approved instruments). Corporate credit unions also provide financial settlement services through the clearing of payments (check clearing), ACH (Automated Clearing House), electronic funds transfers (EFT) and ATM transaction services and networks.
In banking and finance, clearing denotes all activities from the time a commitment is made for a transaction until it is settled. This process turns the promise of payment into the actual movement of money from one account to another. Clearing houses were formed to facilitate such transactions among banks.
Electronic funds transfer (EFT) are electronic transfer of money from one bank account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions, via computer-based systems, without the direct intervention of bank staff.
Originally, most states operated their own corporate credit union, which had strong ties to the credit union league operating in that state. Many corporate credit unions also provided consumer services to the employees and official family members of credit unions in cases where local or Federal laws prevented people employed by or having an interest in the operation of a financial institution as a means of fraud prevention. The majority of modern corporate credit unions no longer perform a consumer function.[citation needed]
A credit union league or credit union central is cooperative federation for credit unions.
In law, fraud is deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud itself can be a civil wrong, a criminal wrong, or it may cause no loss of money, property or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, such as obtaining a passport or travel document, driver's license or qualifying for a mortgage by way of false statements.
Through the 1980s, the corporate credit union industry underwent a consolidation movement due to limited resources in the face of increasing demands or because of institution failures (ex. CapCorp, a Washington DC based corporate credit union that failed in the 1990s). There has also been a move by the stronger corporate credit unions to cross state lines and offer their services to credit unions that were previously outside their scope of business.
In business, consolidation or amalgamation is the merger and acquisition of many smaller companies into a few much larger ones. In the context of financial accounting, consolidation refers to the aggregation of financial statements of a group company as consolidated financial statements. The taxation term of consolidation refers to the treatment of a group of companies and other entities as one entity for tax purposes. Under the Halsbury's Laws of England, 'amalgamation' is defined as "a blending together of two or more undertakings into one undertaking, the shareholders of each blending company, becoming, substantially, the shareholders of the blended undertakings. There may be amalgamations, either by transfer of two or more undertakings to a new company, or to the transfer of one or more companies to an existing company".
The largest corporate credit union in the United States was U.S. Central Credit Union. U.S. Central Credit Union and the second largest corporate credit union, Western Corporate Federal Credit Union, were placed in conservatorship by the NCUA on March 20, 2009.[1] On September 24, 2010, NCUA regulators also seized three wholesale credit unions located in Connecticut, Illinois and Texas.[2]
U.S. Central Federal Credit Union was the largest corporate credit union in the United States. Unlike consumer driven credit unions, U.S. Central provided its services only to other corporate credit unions, in effect acting as the "corporate credit union's credit union". The organization was founded in 1974. The organization had to be shut down in 2009 as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. Eventually, Credit Suisse was forced to pay $400 million to resolve claims that it sold faulty mortgage-backed securities to U.S. Central Federal Credit Union
Conservatorship is a legal concept in the United States. A guardian or a protector is appointed by a judge to manage the financial affairs and/or daily life of another due to physical or mental limitations, or old age. A person under conservatorship is a "conservatee," a term that can refer to an adult. A person under guardianship is a "ward," a term that can also refer to a minor child.
The NCUA Corporate Stabilization Program was created on January 28, 2009, in response to investment losses incurred at U.S. Central Credit Union. U.S. Central was a third-level corporate credit union that provided services to other corporate credit unions, which in turn served public-facing credit unions.
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