CUNA has updated its Military Lending Act (MLA) credit card fee spreadsheet for the first quarter of 2019. The updated resource can be found in the CUNA Compliance Community’s “CUNA Compliance Tools” folder in the file share library, and under the “Resources” tab in CUNA’s MLA e-Guide.

The spreadsheet is necessary because a credit union may exclude a bona fide credit card fee from the military annual percentage rate (MAPR) if the fee is considered “reasonable,” under the MLA rule.

This means that the fee must be less than or equal to the average fee for the same or similar product charged by five separate card issuers that each have at least $3 billion in outstanding credit card balances at any time during the three-year period preceding the time the average is determined.

Currently, there are approximately 20 large card issuers that meet this requirement and only one of those is a credit union.

Together these card issuers have about 260 card agreements in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Card Agreement Database, but since many appear to be Private Label cards, only around 85 of the agreements seem to be useful for MLA purposes.

The exclusion generally applies to finance charges under Regulation Z such as cash advance fees, foreign transaction fees, balance transfer fees and transaction fees for purchases and minimum interest charges. Other charges, which are not finance charges under Regulation Z, such as a late fee or an over-limit fee are not included in the calculation of the MAPR, so the exclusion does not apply.

The exclusion does not apply to fees or premiums for credit insurance, fees for a debt cancellation contract, fees for a debt suspension agreement, or to fees for a credit related ancillary product. Those fees must be included in the calculation of the MAPR.

Credit unions can also find in the above-mentioned locations:

• First quarter spreadsheet for 2020;
• All four quarterly spreadsheets from 2019;
• All four quarterly spreadsheets from 2018; and
• The Initial spreadsheet from September 2017.

In addition to the CompBlog, CUNA’s Compliance Community contains discussion boards and a number of other resources for credit union compliance professionals around the country.