Debbie Matz with President Barack Obama.

National Credit Union Administration Board Chairman Debbie Matz announced this week that she would step down from the agency at the end of April.

“I am proud of all that NCUA has accomplished to bring stability, advance growth and promote flexibility in our nation’s credit unions,” Matz said in a statement. “Through the hard work of credit union officials and NCUA staff, the credit union system rebounded mightily from the depths of the Great Recession. Virtually every metric indicates the credit union system today is strong and resilient.”

Matz has led the agency since August 2009. She served a total of 11 years at the NCUA, is the eighth board chairman and the only NCUA board member ever confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a second term, which ended April 10, 2015. She represents the NCUA on the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, which she chaired from 2011-2013, and on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, on which she has served since its inception in 2010.

The NCUA said in a statement that when she took over the agency, “the credit union system was on the brink of collapse.”

“The survival of the system was threatened by corporate credit unions holding $50 billion in toxic assets and consumer credit unions facing billions of dollars in potential losses. Such catastrophic losses would have wiped out the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which at the time had only $8 billion in assets,” the NCUA said.

The agency praised Matz’s leadership and said that it had been the first federal financial institutions regulator to recover losses from Wall Street firms that sold faulty mortgage-backed securities to corporate credit unions.

Beginning in May, Matz plans to take time off before pursuing new professional opportunities.