Cre­at­ing a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment to en­able fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion re­mains a crit­i­cal com­po­nent for cred­it unions, as this was a key fo­cus of the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed an­nu­al in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion and 53rd an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the Caribbean Con­fed­er­a­tion of Cred­it Unions, which took place at the Mar­riott Ho­tel and Re­sort, St Kitts from June 22 to 25.

The lo­cal cred­it union move­ment was rep­re­sent­ed by the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T.

Di­anne Joseph, its chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian said da­ta for T&T and re­gion­al­ly sug­gests that a large num­ber of cit­i­zens have not been sav­ing or are not a part of any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

“The due dili­gence process has been named as one of the ob­sta­cles. For ex­am­ple, if some­one is liv­ing at a res­i­dence where the own­er, who was their rel­a­tive, has passed away, it is very dif­fi­cult for them to get a proof of ad­dress be­cause that would have been in the de­ceased per­son’s name. There­fore, this pre­vents them from open­ing a bank ac­count. Al­so, some con­tract work­ers or those em­ployed as store clerks do not get payslips which is a re­quire­ment to al­so open a bank ac­count,” she ex­plained.

How­ev­er, she said the cred­it union fra­ter­ni­ty has been work­ing with cit­i­zens to en­sure they have a place with­in that sys­tem and there­fore, ben­e­fit from its “low cost loans and sav­ing prod­ucts, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and oth­er guid­ance and sup­port to have a space.”

“The sup­port of our line min­istry and gov­ern­ment will add val­ue in achiev­ing this goal which re­quires strong col­lab­o­ra­tion and much thought and con­sid­er­a­tion if we are to em­brace peo­ple of all walks of life. In­deed, this was a top­i­cal is­sue over the con­fer­ence days in St Kitts,” Joseph added.

The league is a mem­ber of the con­fed­er­a­tion and has been at­tend­ing its con­ven­tion and AGM.

This year’s con­ven­tion was host­ed un­der the theme ‘Cre­at­ing Con­nec­tions, Build­ing Bridges…To­geth­er,’ and dis­cus­sions fo­cused on sev­er­al crit­i­cal top­ics which in­clud­ed the role of cor­po­rate stew­ards in man­ag­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing risks, lead­er­ship strate­gies to fos­ter team ex­cel­lence, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty among oth­ers.

Joseph not­ed these is­sues were aimed at im­prov­ing the skill set of cred­it union lead­ers around the globe. She said one of the ben­e­fits of the con­fer­ence was the abil­i­ty to ex­change in­for­ma­tion and cre­ate part­ner­ships and al­liances with cred­it unions and ex­change pro­grammes at which the larg­er leagues lend tech­ni­cal and oth­er sup­port to those that are small­er to en­sure that the glob­al move­ment re­mains re­silient.

Re­gard­ing chal­lenges, she iden­ti­fied the cost of com­pli­ance as one of the top­i­cal or preva­lent ob­sta­cles for the re­gion­al sec­tor, specif­i­cal­ly re­lat­ing to the an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing re­quire­ments, which al­so serve as a de­ter­rent to many mem­bers in open­ing ac­counts at fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

“These are con­sid­ered by mem­bers as very rigid, the process time-con­sum­ing and the de­lays in ap­point­ments at some fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions re­main bur­den­some. While gov­ern­ments have been talk­ing about the chal­lenge, the in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments re­main and thus far there seem to be no ear­ly end or ease to this prob­lem,” Joseph said.

From the per­spec­tive of gov­er­nance and lead­er­ship, she said the league, as a mem­ber of the con­fed­er­a­tion, has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the need for con­tin­ued strong gov­er­nance stan­dards at the lev­el of the con­fed­er­a­tion and to re­view and dis­cuss per­for­mance an­nu­al­ly.

In this vein, she said there con­tin­ues to be ad­vo­ca­cy for fur­ther en­hance­ment or strength­en­ing of Caribbean Con­fed­er­a­tion of Cred­it Unions’ gov­er­nance struc­ture, as well as ef­fec­tive board suc­ces­sion plan­ning at the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els and the need for en­sur­ing that all rules and guide­lines are kept cur­rent.

“In this con­nec­tion, we re­main the le­git­i­mate in­ter­na­tion­al voice for the lo­cal cred­it union sec­tor and have been em­brac­ing every op­por­tu­ni­ty to share the ed­u­ca­tion­al space with our mem­bers,” Joseph main­tained.

In tak­ing the move­ment froward, she said the league re­mains aware that board suc­ces­sion plan­ning is crit­i­cal, adding that there must be ad­e­quate sys­tems to al­low for a smooth tran­si­tion from one leader to the oth­er.

“Every di­rec­tor should be giv­en a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty for ad­vance­ment with­in an or­gan­i­sa­tion so that the tal­ent pool re­mains rel­e­vant and easy to tran­sit in cas­es of the planned or un­planned va­can­cy.

“The im­por­tance of such strate­gic plan­ning or strate­gic move can­not be overem­pha­sised and is con­sid­ered a best prac­tice in a mod­ern world. This more­so, that gov­er­nance stan­dards and codes have been con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing and lead­ers must take cog­ni­sance and stay abreast,” Joseph ex­plained.

Im­pact of AI

From the per­spec­tive of the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, she said this has been mov­ing at a very fast pace, not­ing that, as such, par­tic­i­pants dis­cussed the need for con­sul­ta­tion on leg­is­la­tion which may serve to add greater val­ue.

“There is a view by some that if left un­man­aged, AI can be dam­ag­ing as mis­in­for­ma­tion may pro­lif­er­ate eas­i­ly,” Joseph said.

Re­gard­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, par­tic­i­pants be­lieve there must be fur­ther strength­en­ing of the IT in­fra­struc­ture in or­gan­i­sa­tions to pro­tect mem­bers’ da­ta and to en­sure there is no easy way for hack­ers to gain ac­cess to sys­tems.

In this re­gard, she said the league has been en­gag­ing ex­perts in this area who have been vis­it­ing and guid­ing re­spec­tive lo­cal cred­it unions, not­ing that coun­ter­parts around the world are al­so very much on top of this.

“Our league pro­motes con­tin­u­ous train­ing and de­vel­op­ment and in this re­gard, pri­or to the CC­CU con­ven­tion and AGM, we an­nu­al­ly host our in­ter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship con­fer­ence to share cur­rent and crit­i­cal up­dates on mat­ters of in­ter­est to the cred­it union move­ment with our lead­ers,” Joseph said, as she called on lead­ers to con­duct train­ing in­ter­ven­tions.

Fail­ure to do so, Joseph warned, would mean they will not be able to ef­fec­tive­ly lead their or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“We live in an ever-chang­ing world. The tech­nol­o­gy, gov­er­nance stan­dards, com­pli­ance re­quire­ments and gen­er­al busi­ness op­er­a­tional guide­lines con­tin­ue to emerge and we must be able to quick­ly adapt if we are to com­pete in the fi­nan­cial land­scape,” Joseph added.

She fur­ther not­ed that the CC­CU rep­re­sents 17 leagues with T&T and Ja­maica be­ing the strongest.

Joseph added, the T&T league rep­re­sents 129 cred­it unions with 700,000 mem­bers and TT$19 bil­lion in as­sets.

“This puts our league and move­ment in a very strong po­si­tion with­in the re­gion. In this re­gard, we con­tin­ue to lend a ‘Big Broth­er’ hand to our leagues for de­vel­op­men­tal pur­pos­es when re­quired,” she said.

Mean­while, the Caribbean Con­fed­er­a­tion of Cred­it Unions has not­ed that its mem­ber­ship con­tin­ues to grow.

Pres­i­dent Hal­ly Haynes, who shared some sta­tis­tics, said the re­gion­al cred­it union sec­tor’s fig­ures for 2023 showed there were 197 cred­it unions di­rect­ly af­fil­i­at­ed to the CC­CU, which served 2.6 mil­lion mem­bers.

When com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, he said this was an in­crease of 53,256 mem­bers (2.1 per cent).

He said sav­ings to­talled US$7.3 bil­lion, while loans to­talled US$5.3 bil­lion to date.

Haynes laud­ed the work of the cred­it union sec­tor and mo­ti­vat­ed par­tic­i­pants to con­tin­ue to strength­en the in­ter­nal process­es and their lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ty.