GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

New­ly-ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T, Auldric Nep­tune, who took the reigns on April 13, 2025 has ar­tic­u­lat­ed a five-pronged strat­e­gy to trans­form the $20 bil­lion sec­tor, fo­cus­ing on: strength­en­ing in­ter­nal lead­er­ship and gov­er­nance; achiev­ing re­gion­al dom­i­nance by tar­get­ing the Caribbean’s num­ber one rank­ing; ag­gres­sive­ly mod­ernising ser­vice de­liv­ery through en­hanced shared ser­vices and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty; proac­tive­ly work­ing to grow small­er cred­it unions in­to com­pet­i­tive play­ers; and ur­gent­ly se­cur­ing key leg­isla­tive re­forms to en­able gov­ern­ment cheque en­cash­ment and ac­cep­tance of busi­ness­es as mem­bers.

Rep­re­sent­ing over 763,000 mem­bers en­com­pass­ing 133 in­di­vid­ual cred­it unions, Nep­tune’s vi­sion is cen­tred on dri­ving a re­silient, com­pet­i­tive and world-class cred­it union move­ment ca­pa­ble of chal­leng­ing tra­di­tion­al bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions.

His in­ter­nal pri­or­i­ty, he not­ed, is re­in­forc­ing lead­er­ship by fos­ter­ing trust and trans­paren­cy at the league’s high­est lev­els and a key step has been the im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion of an “open door pol­i­cy” in­tend­ed to elim­i­nate com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps, ease un­cer­tain­ties and en­sure uni­ty of pur­pose.

“This is a de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy aimed at leav­ing no gaps for break­downs in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, ad­dress­ing any doubts or fears among those with whom I must in­ter­act as the new pres­i­dent, and build­ing a foun­da­tion of trust es­sen­tial for uni­fied ac­tion,” he ex­plained.

He added that from a broad­er per­spec­tive, as he spear­heads the league’s cru­cial roles of ad­vo­ca­cy, lob­by­ing and train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for all mem­ber cred­it unions, Nep­tune’s over­ar­ch­ing in­ten­tion is to fur­ther strength­en gov­er­nance struc­tures, en­sure the high­est lev­el of reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance in an in­creas­ing­ly scru­ti­nised fi­nan­cial world and the pro­mo­tion of ro­bust strate­gic plan­ning process­es.

“These mea­sures are de­signed to so­lid­i­fy the po­si­tion of league mem­bers as ma­jor, com­pet­i­tive play­ers in the na­tion­al fi­nan­cial land­scape,” Nep­tune said.

An­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant strate­gic ob­jec­tive is the pur­suit of re­gion­al dom­i­nance.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the T&T move­ment is cur­rent­ly the sec­ond largest in the Caribbean—be­hind Ja­maica— Nep­tune ex­pressed con­fi­dence in se­cur­ing the cov­et­ed first-place rank­ing in the fu­ture.

“My ex­pressed ab­solute con­fi­dence is that this is not a per­ma­nent rank­ing and firm­ly be­lieves that the move­ment can se­cure the cov­et­ed first place some­time in the fu­ture,” he said.

This am­bi­tion dri­ves the in­ter­nal push for world-class stan­dards and is re­in­forced by Nep­tune’s re­cent in­stal­la­tion as a di­rec­tor on the Caribbean Con­fed­er­a­tion of Cred­it Unions (CC­CU) board, en­sur­ing strong re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and shared wis­dom.

Nep­tune al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of strength­en­ing and ex­pand­ing small­er cred­it unions so they can even­tu­al­ly com­pete with the na­tion’s largest and even join the ranks of bil­lion-dol­lar in­sti­tu­tions.

“The goal is to nur­ture these in­sti­tu­tions so they too can grow, ex­pand their ser­vices, and even­tu­al­ly join the ranks of the bil­lion-dol­lar cred­it unions in the fu­ture,” he said.

To achieve this, he is fo­cus­ing on mod­ern chal­lenges such as cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, IT in­fra­struc­ture and shared ser­vices.

“This plat­form is en­vi­sioned not on­ly to pro­vide new and crit­i­cal ser­vices to mem­bers but specif­i­cal­ly to de­liv­er very im­por­tant ser­vices at a re­duced cost, lever­ag­ing economies of scale. My ul­ti­mate goal is for all cred­it unions, re­gard­less of size, to op­er­ate at max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy and to con­tin­u­ous­ly look at new ways to pro­vide mod­ernised ser­vices to their mem­bers, thus al­low­ing them to more ag­gres­sive­ly com­pete in the dy­nam­ic fi­nan­cial mar­ket­place,” he ex­plained.

Nep­tune has al­so moved quick­ly to build strate­gic part­ner­ships.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, he has over­seen the sign­ing of mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing with the Cu­ra­cao League, which would as­sist in sup­port of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and an ex­change pro­gramme to al­low for the trans­fer of knowl­edge be­tween the lead­er­ship and staff from both leagues; the T&T Mort­gage Bank which aims to as­sist mem­bers of the move­ment who may be oth­er­wise un­able to ac­cess mort­gage fi­nanc­ing from with­in the move­ment as all cred­it unions do not have the ca­pac­i­ty to en­ter in­to long term mort­gage loans to their mem­bers; as well as in­vest­ment prod­ucts, or ap­pro­pri­ate av­enues to ac­cess sound in­vest­ment op­tions; and the lo­cal fund and as­set man­age­ment en­ti­ty As­pire Group – to arrange new prod­uct of­fer­ings in in­vest­ment, eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing and gen­er­al wealth cre­ation for cred­it unions and their mem­bers.

Nep­tune added that all these agree­ments are strate­gi­cal­ly in­ter­twined and aimed at strength­en­ing the po­si­tion of each en­ti­ty in­volved, crit­i­cal­ly work­ing to im­prove and widen the scope of ser­vices avail­able to cred­it union mem­bers.

Look­ing ahead, a ma­jor mile­stone planned for 2026 is the ac­qui­si­tion of a per­ma­nent head­quar­ters for the league.

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent said one of the most ur­gent pri­or­i­ties re­mains leg­isla­tive re­form—a mat­ter cred­it unions have pur­sued for more than a decade, specif­i­cal­ly for cred­it unions to be grant­ed the au­thor­i­ty to en­cash gov­ern­ment cheques, to ac­cept busi­ness­es as mem­bers, and to en­hance the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing the ben­e­fits due to ben­e­fi­cia­ries up­on the death of a mem­ber, mod­ernising their ser­vice of­fer­ings and le­gal stand­ing.

“These lob­by ef­forts have been in ef­fect for more than a decade un­der suc­ces­sive regimes. More re­cent­ly, we have met with our cur­rent line Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, who has promised to ac­tive­ly pur­sue these mat­ters on be­half of the cred­it union move­ment. Its im­por­tance can­not be over-em­pha­sised as the mem­ber­ship has been clam­our­ing for these changes for some time, as a lot of our mem­bers who re­ceive pen­sion and oth­er gov­ern­ment cheques are re­quired, in many in­stances, to hire a taxi to get to a com­mer­cial bank to en­cash their pen­sion cheques, rather than a cred­it union that is walk­ing dis­tance from their home. In the case of small busi­ness­es, while cred­it unions can have ac­counts for an in­di­vid­ual; an in­di­vid­ual mem­ber who has a du­ly reg­is­tered busi­ness, can­not, un­der the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion, have that busi­ness open an ac­count at a cred­it union un­less it’s reg­is­tered as a co-op­er­a­tive. This is con­sid­ered an old mod­el, and we con­tin­ue to hold our po­si­tion that in a mod­ern eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, cred­it unions must be al­lowed to ac­cept busi­ness­es as mem­bers,” Nep­tune main­tained.

Loan Trends

On cur­rent lend­ing trends, Nep­tune re­port­ed that many cred­it unions are see­ing strong loan per­for­mance through­out the year, par­tic­u­lar­ly in home im­prove­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and ve­hi­cle loans.

In sev­er­al cred­it unions, these cat­e­gories have in­creased by 50 to 75 per cent com­pared with 2024.

“This is not be­cause of Christ­mas, but all year,” he said adding, “ Based on feed­back, we un­der­stand that there is a height­ened aware­ness to up­date skills and com­pe­ten­cies and thus ed­u­ca­tion is in fo­cus; mem­bers al­so re­quire a com­fort­able and safe space to call home, and many mem­bers al­so pre­fer their per­son­al ve­hi­cles cit­ing a low­ered risk when com­pared to trav­el by pub­lic trans­porta­tion.”

About Auldric Nep­tune

Nep­tune brings to the role over 13 years of ex­pe­ri­ence as an at­tor­ney with ex­per­tise span­ning ar­eas crit­i­cal to cred­it union op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly, prop­er­ty, pro­bate, crim­i­nal, labour and con­tract law.

His le­gal ca­reer fol­lowed near­ly three decades in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), and dur­ing this ex­ten­sive tenure, Nep­tune worked across sev­er­al de­mand­ing branch­es and sec­tions, each pro­vid­ing unique in­sights in­to the fab­ric of the na­tion’s se­cu­ri­ty and so­ci­etal needs.

These ex­pe­ri­ences honed his in­ves­tiga­tive skills, his com­mit­ment to jus­tice, and his abil­i­ty to man­age com­plex op­er­a­tions un­der pres­sure.

Nep­tune’s polic­ing ca­reer cul­mi­nat­ed in an ear­ly re­tire­ment while serv­ing as the act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice in the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

Be­yond the po­lice ser­vice, his com­mit­ment to ed­u­ca­tion was ev­i­dent as a part-time lec­tur­er at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, where he im­part­ed knowl­edge of labour dy­nam­ics and co-op­er­a­tive prin­ci­ples, fur­ther so­lid­i­fy­ing his un­der­stand­ing of the move­ment’s core phi­los­o­phy.

About the league

The Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T is the na­tion­al um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion for cred­it unions na­tion­wide.

Its core func­tions in­clude ad­vo­ca­cy, lob­by­ing and train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for and on be­half of cred­it unions and their mem­bers.

Cred­it Unions are reg­u­lat­ed un­der the Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­eties Act 81:03 of 1971 un­der the Com­mis­sion­er for Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment as Reg­u­la­tor and as part of the Min­istry of Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment as line min­istry.