Interview with Mr. Devon Charles, Manager of Grenville Co-operative Credit Union Ltd.

Grenville Co-operative Credit Union is celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary, the Barnacle caught up with General Manager, Devon Charles at the Company’s twenty-third AGM at Bain’s Hall in Grenville and asked him about the progress of the credit union over the past two decades we now present to you our readers the text of that interview.

Hundreds of members have turned out for this year’s AGM; what are you taking form that?
The turn out that we have here today, as we celebrate twenty five years, is a demonstration that our members have trust and confidence in this credit union which is attempting to seek their financial interest by providing them with the advice they need.

I believe that a lot of the work that we have been doing over the years in attempting to bring our members together as a family is no paying off. Our theme speaks to this in terms of a financial family on the move.

I feel very please today because I have seen our members asking questions and showing interested in terms of what’s happening within the credit union and in the end making positive comments.

Last year when we spoke you mentioned that things we tough but you were re-focusing the credit union in a way that it will become more relevant to its members, have you achieved your objective?
Yes! To a great extent, while there may still be quite a lot of work to be done, I feel very satisfied that we have made some progress. Over the last year we continue to reach out, we continue to advocate what Grenville Credit Union is about; we continue to bring service to our members. At this present time we are dissecting our membership and looking to our market segments, we are targeting the schools through the kids, the teachers and the parents.

We are speaking to the farmers, and the small business people and that is what Grenville is about. A lot of what we have been doing over the years in terms of providing guidance and financial literacy to our members is now showing itself in terms of the way members are responding, in terms of coming out to the AGM to here what’s happening and to appreciate what their credit union is doing for them.

In real terms how did the credit union perform, how did the credit union support its members and what areas benefited most?
Over the last year our financial performance has been moderate which is consistent with present market trends. Over the last few years with the whole economic melt down, the sluggishness in the local economy, the high unemployment rate and the more or less drying up of remittances; many of our members have not been able to achieve their desires one way or the other during the last year.

It has been a very challenging year for us, in terms of our approach to lending and our risk level, we have had to refocus to ensure that while we continue to do our best in trying to provide the most accommodating and cost effective services to our members, we have also had to do our own level of tightening up. We’ve been able to do that through our policy reviews and member education.

We are investing a lot in terms of our members and our staff which is very important because in these tough economic times we are to redefining our skills and our competencies in order to compete successfully.

So where as last year has not been one of significant growth, we have been able to pay members 3% in interest, and 7% on dividend.

We have the challenges of delinquency and we are work along with our members to control the rate of delinquency. We are trying to work along with our members to see how we can control our delinquency rates and so fort. We have the issues of the state of the investment market, we suffered some losses at CL Financial and we do have all of those challenges to deal with but all is not loss.

As we deal with them it’s also an opportunity to redefine our approach, and to look at new approaches to enhancing our skills level and come together in terms of ensuring that decisions that we make as a financial institution is in the best interest of the member.