WASHINGTON - The vast majority of credit unions would have fiveor six years to make any changes to accounting standards thatresult from efforts to rewrite parts of the generally acceptedaccounting procedures to resolve differences to internationalstandards, Financial Accounting Standards Board Chairman RobertHerz said today.

Herz told attendees of CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conferencethat some of the changes, which could affect both reporting andcapital requirements, would apply to public companies by 2015.However, smaller financial institutions, including credit unionswould have more time to adjust.

He said that the discussions with their European counterpartsare focusing on issues such as how to deal with off balance sheetinstruments and the question of fair value accounting vs. amortizedcosts accounting.

Herz's organization is meeting regularly with the InternationalAccounting Standards Board to come up with a joint proposal.

He urged attendees to contact FASB or work through CUNA todiscuss their concerns because "your input is absolutelyvital."

Herz spent part of his talk explaining FASB's functions andnoted that it doesn't have a direct say over the accountingpractices used by the federal government.

"I am not going to say anything about the federal government'saccounting, because if you can't say anything nice you shouldn'tsay anything," he quipped.