| WFC Classic: Rating Commercial Credit Risk — What NCUA Expects

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Episode: NCUA’s 2026–2030 Strategic Plan: What Changed and Why It Matters

In this solo episode, Mark Treichel walks through NCUA’s newly released 2026–2030 Strategic Plan and compares it section by section against the prior 2022–2026 plan. The contrast tells credit union leaders exactly where the agency is going — and which of those decisions are now codified as five-year commitments rather than reversible management choices.

What’s covered:

•        The framework requirements: OMB Circular A‑11 and which 19 items the plan needed to address.

•        What dropped out of the 2026 plan: the eight-page economic outlook, dedicated climate-related financial risk objective, full enterprise risk management section, standalone minority depository institution objective, diversity-equity-inclusion language, and the cross-agency collaboration narrative.

•        What’s new in 2026: AI as a standalone strategic objective, the GENIUS Act stablecoin rulemaking as a performance target, the reorganization codified as objective 3.2, real estate footprint reduction language, merit-based hiring as a deliverable, deregulation quantified at 30 actions, and a chartering automation target.

•        The political cycle behind the swings: every administration gets a year after inauguration to issue a new five-year plan, and the language reflects whoever is in office.

•        Practical implications for credit unions: AI-assisted exam scoping, the shift of stakeholder-facing work to the regions, what the 27% workforce reduction means for examination dynamics, and how to read the deregulation scoreboard for substance vs. headline count.

•        Mark’s takeaways: reorganization is now a five-year strategic commitment, safety and soundness remains the North Star, AI in examinations is coming and measurable, the deregulation scoreboard is mostly budget dust with a few real items, and the smaller examiner footprint creates short-term wins and longer-term structural questions.

A practical episode for credit union CEOs, board members, CFOs, and senior staff who want to understand what NCUA has actually committed to over the next five years and what to do about it before the next board meeting.

About the host:

Mark Treichel is the principal of Credit Union Exam Solutions. He spent more than 33 years at NCUA, including eight as Executive Director and over five years on the senior leadership team. He hosts With Flying Colors to help credit unions navigate examinations and regulatory change.

WFC Classic: Conservatorship - When NCUA Removes the Board of Directors

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Mark Treichel sits down with Rick Mumm — a 34-year NCUA veteran who spent 26 of those years in field of membership work, including bylaws, mergers, liquidations, and charter expansions — to walk through NCUA's proposed rule change on customer-client relationships in field of membership decisions.

This proposal is unusual in two respects. First, unlike most of NCUA's recent deregulation announcements, it has real practical impact for credit unions seeking to add fraternal organizations or associations with any customer-client element. Second, the rule is the direct result of an actual appeal that went all the way to the NCUA Board — an appeal pursued by POLAM Federal Credit Union, led by CEO Jennifer Audette, in which the Board denied the appeal but acknowledged inconsistencies in the existing rule and committed to a rewrite.

Topics covered:

•        Why the current Chartering Manual creates inconsistency by specifically naming the Knights of Columbus as qualifying while excluding similar fraternal organizations that sell insurance

•        How Thrivent fits into the picture as another mutual insurance organization that converted from a mutual savings bank into a federal credit union

•        The affiliate-membership wrinkle: under both Knights and Thrivent, members who don't buy insurance are affiliate members without voting rights — which the Chartering Manual says shouldn't qualify for credit union membership

•        What the proposed rule actually says, why it's so sparse, and what's notably absent from it

•        Why concerns about NCUA's loss of corporate knowledge at the Office of Credit Union Resources and Expansion mean execution will matter more than the text

•        How credit unions should position applications under the new standard

•        Why credit unions with stalled or denied applications should consider submitting comment letters

Rick can be reached at [email protected] or via rcservices.com.

 | WFC Classic: — MBL Global Cash Flow & Credit Proposals — Vin Vieten

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Mark Treichel walks through NCUA’s most recent Inspector General semi-annual report to Congress, covering the April through September 2025 reporting period. Seven credit union failures occurred during the cycle, with internal fraud driving the two largest losses for a combined total of more than $16 million. Mark breaks down the fraud triangle (pressure, opportunity, rationalization), examines what the failures reveal about supervisory committee performance, walks through the patterns NCUA examiners look for, and lays out a practical prevention playbook scaled to credit union size.

In this episode:

•        The seven credit union failures from NCUA’s most recent Inspector General report

•        Why internal fraud accounted for the largest losses

•        The fraud triangle and why opportunity is the most controllable element

•        Record keeping failures as a force-multiplier for every other control breakdown

•        The supervisory committee as the first line of defense

•        What examiners pattern-match against during exams

•        Prevention strategies for credit unions under $50 million in assets

•        Prevention strategies for mid-size and larger credit unions

•        The living fraud risk assessment: member risk, product risk, enterprise risk

•        Why on-site exams will not be replaced by virtual exams

Mark Treichel spent 33 years at NCUA, including eight years as Executive Director. He is now principal of Credit Union Exam Solutions and host of the With Flying Colors podcast.

FC Classic:  So You Are A CAMELS 3 - Now What?

In this episode of With Flying Colors, Mark Treichel walks through NCUA’s May 6 conservatorship of Jackson Area Federal Credit Union of Jackson, Mississippi. Drawing on 33 years at NCUA — including responsibility for some of the agency’s largest historical conservatorships — Mark analyzes the publicly available call report data and explains why this case is unusual.

The credit union reported 9.2% net worth at year-end 2025, alongside loan-to-assets of 27.8%, $108 million in cash on deposit at correspondent banks, and $41.8 million in non-member deposits. Mark works through why these patterns, taken together, are statistically extreme — Jackson Area is the only large credit union in the country with non-member deposits over 25% and loan-to-assets under 30%.

The episode also covers a roughly $2.13 million Q4 net worth entry that lifted capital back above the well-capitalized threshold against just $42,000 in reported quarterly income, the timing of NCUA’s filing of an estimated March 31 call report the day before the conservatorship, and what the language in the press release may signal.

Mark closes with five lessons for credit union boards: healthy ratios are not safety; the income statement can tell the truth the balance sheet hides; non-member deposits without lending growth deserve scrutiny; equity entries without income demand explanation; and NCUA examinations are not fraud audits.

This is a solo episode — Mark’s analysis is based entirely on public data, with no insider information.

WFC Classic ALCO Part 2  & In Practice: Essential Reports Analysis and Risk Management

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In this episode of With Flying Colors, Mark Treichel sits down with Travis Goodman, CFA, Principal at ALM First Financial Advisors, and Mark Sun, Portfolio Manager at ALM First, to discuss the recent launch of the ALM First Loan Fund — the first non-registered investment fund approved by the National Credit Union Administration Board for federal credit unions, and the first trade just executed under it.

The conversation covers:

•        How the loan fund structure differs from a traditional loan participation, and why standardization matters at scale.

•        The institutional discipline built into the structure: third-party loss estimates, third-party agreed-upon procedures, and third-party cash agent functions.

•        Eligibility and guardrails: the 30-credit-union lifetime cap, the complex-credit-union requirement, the 50% and 15% net worth limits, and how state-chartered credit unions with federal parity can participate.

•        The pilot timeline: seven years from approval, or five years from the first trade — whichever comes first — and what it means for the path to permanence.

•        The role of credit union deposits as a unique, counter-cyclical source of funding in the institutional capital markets.

•        Asset eligibility, including the under-10-year maturity rule and the focus on consumer loan products.

•        How smaller credit unions might eventually benefit from the structure even if they are not eligible for the current pilot.

For credit unions interested in learning more about the ALM First Loan Fund, contact: [email protected]