National Credit Union Administration officials say they’re making strides in diversifying the agency’s workforce.
At the NCUA’s monthly board meeting on April 21, the new director for the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, Miguel A. Polanco, highlighted the agency’s progress in broadening its talent pool.
“Belonging is what I consider to be a composite indicator, [as] it is the byproduct of getting both inclusion and engagement right within an organization,” Polanco said in the meeting. “As an agency, we shoot for a sense of belonging as an optimal state and if we measure for it, we can gauge how effective we have been in delivering the conditions where employees are able to contribute to the best of their ability.”
The NCUA established its inclusion office in 2011 as required under section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which directs federal financial regulators to develop diversity standards for their workforces and suppliers and to report annually on their progress. The NCUA’s inclusion office is also tasked with assessing diversity practices at the credit unions the agency regulates.
Polanco reported that roughly 44% of the agency’s new hires for 2021 were women, up 6% from a year earlier. Forty-two percent of the hires were categorized as minorities, an increase of 1% from the year prior. Additionally, the number of new staffers with disabilities rose to 200 from 177 in 2020. Overall, the NCUA had 1,152 employees as of Dec. 31, 2021.
Part of the NCUA’s strategy to recruit more representative talent involves attending job fairs at historically Black colleges and universities as well as at other schools with large minority populations. It also markets its job opportunities on social media and in print advertising.
Kyle Hauptman, vice chairman of the NCUA, said that the credit union model is diverse by nature as many institutions are formed to serve groups based on religion, race, employee organizations and more.
“In order to maintain that diversity among credit unions, including among more recent immigrant groups, I feel the NCUA should also focus its [diversity, equity and inclusion] efforts on how our regulatory practices affect financial inclusion among America's 130 million credit union members,” Hauptman said.
Beyond recruitment, the agency also increased its total reportable contract dollars to minority and women-owned businesses in 2021 by approximately 5% from 2020, or $5.9 million.
Todd Harper, chairman of the NCUA, stressed that the agency will continue its work to address concerns surrounding the retention of women and Hispanic employees within the agency, as well as the diversification of senior management.
“We recognize that the NCUA must lead by example and advance diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging within our agency, especially in areas where we have fallen short,” Harper said.
In addition to internal diversity efforts, the agency has helped credit unions identify and tackle representation issues of their own through its Credit Union Diversity Self-Assessment tool. With the reporting, institutions can isolate what practices and departments are lacking in equity and work to meet the standards set by the NCUA.
“Everywhere I go, I’ve described financial inclusion as the civil rights issue of our time,” said Rodney Hood, a former NCUA chairman and current board member. “True inclusion within our financial regulators, financial institutions and communities is a goal we must all strive towards.”
