There is a sug­ges­tion that a merg­er be­tween some small cred­it unions may be their on­ly route to com­pet­i­tive­ness in the cur­rent tough en­vi­ron­ment. Cred­it union stal­wart Kei­th Bourne made the point dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view with Bar­ba­dos Busi­ness Au­thor­i­ty as the move­ment cel­e­brat­ed World Cred­it Union Day last week. He said there was grow­ing com­pe­ti­tion for mem­bers be­tween some of Bar­ba­dos' 37 cred­it unions as larg­er en­ti­ties re­laxed their mem­ber­ship rules. Bourne, a key play­er in the growth of Bar­ba­dos Pub­lic Work­ers' Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union Lim­it­ed (BP­W­C­CUL), the coun­try's biggest cred­it union, ex­plained that this "fierce com­pe­ti­tion" would make it more dif­fi­cult for some of the small­er cred­it unions to re­cruit mem­bers.

He cit­ed the high cost of tech­nol­o­gy, which he be­lieved some of these small­er unions could not af­ford, as an­oth­er rea­son why merg­ers might be­come nec­es­sary. "What will hap­pen," he said, "is that some of the larg­er cred­it unions, be­cause they have so­phis­ti­cat­ed IT sys­tems, would have to as­sist small cred­it unions." A cred­it union­ist with more than 30 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in the move­ment, Bourne said un­like in the past when mem­ber­ship in the var­i­ous cred­it unions was lim­it­ed to peo­ple with­in that rel­e­vant group or sec­tor, the doors of the larg­er or­gan­i­sa­tions were be­ing opened fur­ther, mak­ing mem­ber­ship more ac­ces­si­ble for peo­ple who would hith­er­to not have been able to join. The re­tired man­ag­er of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, plan­ning and train­ing with the BP­W­C­CUL is now a con­sul­tant to the um­brel­la body Bar­ba­dos Co-op­er­a­tive and Cred­it Union League Lim­it­ed, as­sist­ing the small­er cred­it unions.

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