Will Your Next NCUA Exam Be Done Remotely? Posted by Association of Vermont Credit Unions on 10:45 AM

Soon you may not see an NCUA examiner enter your credit union door for an exam.  Instead, it may all be done remotely.  That's the intended future based on a recently completed pilot with 28 credit unions from Montana to Texas. The credit unions ranged from $4 million to $9.8 billion in assets and were deemed eligible for the pilot based on technological savvy and operational and financial history.

In 2016, NCUA created the Flexible Examination program, also known as FLEX.  It allows NCUA to try conducting remote examinations with federal credit unions, a pivot from its current process that's strictly on-site. NCUA believes remote exams have a variety of benefits, including cutting travel costs, a better work-life balance for NCUA employees, and decreasing interruptions to a credit union's operational capacity.  Issues the regulator faced included finding a reliable and secure file transfer portal, enhanced data collection methods, and effective communication between examiners and credit unions.  The technological gap NCUA will face given in smaller credit unions will require more technological aid compared to that of larger ones.

Plans to roll the program out nationwide have not yet been announced. In the meantime, read more details and the reactions of pilot credit unions to remote exams in this CU Journal article.