The NCUA board of directors held its fifth open meeting of 2019 yesterday and approved a proposal that would raise the current nonmember deposit limit from 20 percent to 50 percent.

Under the rule, federal credit unions would be able to accept nonmember and public unit shares up to 50 percent of paid-in and unimpaired capital and surplus.

The director of NCUA’s Office of Credit Union Resources and Expansion also briefed the board on the office’s upcoming activities, including offering more resources for credit unions to identify low-income areas they might serve and to assist people organizing credit unions with the chartering process.

NCUA has a new online low-income designation area workbook that organizing groups and credit unions can use to research low-income areas they can target for possible member recruitment and outreach.

Additionally, the board received an update on the performance of the Share Insurance Fund, which reported a net income of $16.1 million, and a net position of $15.8 billion for the first quarter of 2019. The fund’s total assets increased to $16.2 billion at the end of the quarter from $15.8 billion at the end of the fourth quarter.

For the first quarter of 2019, the number of CAMEL codes 4 and 5 credit unions increased to 202 from 193 at the end of the fourth quarter of 2018. Assets for these credit unions held steady at $11.8 billion. The number of CAMEL code 3 credit unions decreased to 905 from 940 at the end of the fourth quarter. Assets for these credit unions decreased 4.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2018, to $50.5 billion from $52.7 billion.

As previously reported, the board approved a $160.1 million Share Insurance Fund distribution in March. The distribution was made this week for more than 5,500 eligible federally insured credit unions. It is the second largest Share Insurance distribution in the history of the fund. The agency in the past 11 months, has made nearly $900 million in equity distributions.