Loans for Christ­mas, along with those for debt con­sol­i­da­tion and home im­prove­ment, have re­mained as the top three in de­mand from cred­it unions in T&T.

With the Yule­tide sea­son right around the cor­ner, there is no doubt that these three types of fi­nan­cial of­fer­ings will stay as the most sought af­ter, says Di­anne Joseph, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T.

She shared these de­tails along with oth­er in­sights with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian as she al­so spoke about the sig­nif­i­cance of cred­it union month held in Oc­to­ber.

“There is no doubt about it, cred­it union mem­bers con­tin­ue to sub­scribe to loans for var­i­ous pur­pos­es. Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, there was a high­er lev­el of cau­tion on bor­row­ing and a high­er lev­el on debt con­sol­i­da­tion.

“For ex­am­ple, in dis­cus­sions with our mem­bers, we would have dis­cov­ered that there was a good mix in terms of the de­mand for loans be­tween 2021 and 2022. Many cred­it unions had seen a high­er in­crease in loans in 2022, oth­ers re­main at the same lev­el as 2021 and a few­er num­ber have seen a de­cline in loans. In fact, many cred­it unions sur­passed their loans tar­gets in 2022. There was al­so a good mix of the loan type,” Joseph ex­plained.

She fur­ther stat­ed that cur­rent­ly, over 50 per cent of cred­it unions now of­fer spe­cial Christ­mas loans at very com­pet­i­tive rates with the av­er­age stan­dard re­main­ing at one per cent per month on the de­clin­ing bal­ance which av­er­ages ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.6 per cent per an­num.

The loans be­ing of­fered re­main Christ­mas, home im­prove­ment, mo­tor ve­hi­cles, va­ca­tion and ed­u­ca­tion among oth­ers.

To boost in­ter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion, many cred­it unions al­so of­fer a var­ied num­ber of gifts and re­wards for those bor­row­ing or seek­ing mem­ber­ship.

This re­flects that the un­cer­tain­ty of bor­row­ing since af­ter the pan­dem­ic has been di­min­ish­ing at a rea­son­able rate and many mem­bers are again show­ing con­fi­dence in set­tling down to a life that ex­ist­ed pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, Joseph said, not­ing that this is a good sign from an eco­nom­ic stand­point.

Speak­ing more in gen­er­al terms about the move­ment and shar­ing sta­tis­tics as it re­lates to growth, Joseph said the league re­mains not on­ly one of the largest but one of the strongest in the Caribbean, adding that there has been con­sis­tent growth over the pe­ri­od 2020 to 2022 de­spite the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

For ex­am­ple, she cit­ed shares in cred­it unions in­creased by an av­er­age of 0.82 per cent; loans 0.37. per cent; in­sti­tu­tion­al cap­i­tal 1.87 per cent and as­sets 1.41 per cent.

Sim­i­lar­ly, there con­tin­ues to be growth in mem­ber­ship of an av­er­age of 0.85 per cent over the same pe­ri­od.

Re­gard­ing the fi­nan­cial strength of the move­ment, she said that cur­rent mem­ber­ship stands at 763,000 with 129 cred­it unions and $19.0 bil­lion dol­lars in as­sets.

“This in­cludes five bil­lion-dol­lar cred­it unions which safe­ly re­flects a strong 50 per cent con­fi­dence of the pop­u­la­tion who ben­e­fit and hold true to the ethos of cred­it unions,” Joseph said.

The league is the na­tion­al um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion for cred­it unions, man­aged by a board of 12 di­rec­tors and an au­dit com­mit­tee of three mem­bers

Its core func­tion in­cludes ad­vo­ca­cy, lob­by­ing and train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for an on be­half of cred­it unions and their mem­bers.

As such, Joseph ex­plained a keen watch is kept and all types of na­tion­al is­sues ad­dressed in­clu­sive of cur­rent and pro­posed leg­isla­tive amend­ments to en­sure that the in­ter­est of cred­it unions is con­sis­tent­ly pro­tect­ed and that there are no re­al or im­plied threat to the work of cred­it unions or mem­bers’ ben­e­fits.

This more­so, she added this has re­sult­ed in cred­it unions bring­ing peo­ple clos­er to­geth­er through de­mo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber-owned fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions that put peo­ple over prof­it.

“We val­ue and cred­it the ca­pac­i­ty of cred­it unions to re­spond to mem­bers’ needs and to sur­vive and thrive un­der var­i­ous forms of eco­nom­ic pres­sures,” Joseph stat­ed.

With con­tin­u­ous ef­fort and em­pha­sis on growth and de­vel­op­ment, train­ing re­mains one of the key av­enues in achiev­ing this, some of which are specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to keep them com­pet­i­tive with­in the glob­al fi­nan­cial mar­ket­place.

For 2023, the league trained and re­trained over 1,042 peo­ple in var­i­ous ar­eas such as strat­e­gy and strate­gic plan­ning, cred­it ad­min­is­tra­tion, new gov­er­nance codes, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment among oth­ers.

In the ar­eas of an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and an­ti-ter­ror­ism spe­cial­i­sa­tion, train­ing was of­fered to over 1,100 per­sons.

For 2024 thus far, Joseph said both these fig­ures have al­ready been sur­passed as she em­pha­sised, “Con­tin­u­ous train­ing and de­vel­op­ment is crit­i­cal if lead­ers must ef­fec­tive­ly lead their or­gan­i­sa­tions and this re­mains up­per­most in our minds and we are hap­py that the lead­er­ship of our cred­it unions have al­so bought in­to the idea.”

It is in this con­text the league recog­nised cred­it unions for ex­cel­lence in the work that they do, specif­i­cal­ly in the ar­eas of fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment on In­ter­na­tion­al Cred­it Union Day each year—the last held on Oc­to­ber 17 this year.

Nine­teen awards were pre­sent­ed with Rhand Cred­it Union tak­ing the award for the Most Out­stand­ing Cred­it Union Over­all based on its 2023 com­bined per­for­mance in the ar­eas of fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment.

With a mem­ber­ship of 23,980 as­sets, that en­ti­ty has $807.4 mil­lion in as­sets and paid a div­i­dend of 3.5 per cent for 2023 and com­pet­ed against 13 oth­er cred­it unions of sim­i­lar mem­ber­ship size, Joseph de­tailed.

The clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of In­ter­na­tion­al Cred­it Union Month takes place at Shaw Park, To­ba­go from Oc­to­ber 31 to No­vem­ber 3 and will in­clude two days of ed­u­ca­tion work­shops, and an awards cel­e­bra­tion to recog­nise cred­it union pi­o­neers and cred­it unions that con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the growth and sta­bil­i­ty of cred­it unions in T&T.

On glob­al front, the league and the move­ment joined the in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it union move­ment in cel­e­brat­ing cred­it union month from Oc­to­ber 1 to 31.

This year’s in­ter­na­tion­al theme was “One World Through Co-op­er­a­tive Fi­nance,” which Joseph said re­flect­ed the crit­i­cal role of the glob­al cred­it union move­ment that con­tin­ues to pro­vide not just fi­nance, but “co-op­er­a­tive fi­nance” – fi­nance that is af­ford­able and one that pro­vides peo­ple of all walks of life with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to save, bor­row and in­vest in crit­i­cal prod­ucts and ser­vices at com­pet­i­tive rates.

These prod­ucts in­clude in­ter alia, loans for var­i­ous pur­pos­es, shares as a form of life sav­ings and in­vest­ment prod­ucts such as fixed de­posits and in­vest­ment in stocks and bonds.

The im­por­tance of cred­it unions have al­so been hailed by the Gov­ern­ment as the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try on No­vem­ber 24, 2023 not­ed their con­tri­bu­tions to trade and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has said cred­it unions con­tribute over 5.6 per cent to T&T’s GDP and ac­count for in ex­cess of 4 per cent of the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial as­sets, as she un­der­scored the sec­tor is, there­fore, not an in­signif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the so­cial and eco­nom­ic fab­ric of our coun­try, and is a wel­comed part­ner in an era of tu­mul­tuous glob­al shocks.