CUNA Senior Economist Dawit Kebede said the February Consumer Price Index Report shows the smallest increase since December 2021, and there may be more reduction in the next few months as the CPI starts showing reduction in housing rents.  

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week is the second largest failure of a financial institution in U.S. history. While this situation does not include any credit union failure, it may still create consumer concerns and questions for credit unions.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has established a Ransomware Vulnerability Warning Pilot to determine vulnerabilities commonly associated with known ransomware exploitation and warn critical infrastructure entities of those vulnerabilities, enabling mitigation before a ransomware incident occurs.

CUNA Senior Economist Dawit Kebede said February employment gains came in stronger than expected, and additional data on consumer spending, and inflation are higher than anticipated this year, opening the door for higher rate increase than initially expected.

CUNA and other organizations support the Federal Communications Commission’s quick action to curb illegal robotexts, they wrote to the FCC in an ex parte letter responding to a February public draft Report and Order from the FCC on message blocking.

The NCUA Board will vote on a subordinated debt final rule at its March 16 meeting. The meeting will be streamed live on NCUA.gov, and will begin at 10 a.m. ET. 

President Joe Biden’s draft FY24 budget proposal contains $341 million for the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, an increase of $17 million from the 2023 enacted level. CUNA has called for $500 million in funding.

CUNA wrote House Ways and Means Committee leadership with several recommendations for the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund for its hearing Thursday on the administration’s FY24 budget proposal.

CUNA continues to be concerned with the CFPB's overly broad use of the term “junk fees,” as it will result in less consumer access to credit and ignores many standard fees that consumers opt into.