Credit unions not “poor man’s bank”

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33962, 1 October 1975, Page 18

Credit unions not “poor man’s bank”

'.Vew Zealand Press Association HAMILTON. Credit unions are not in business to drive banks out of business, a world credit union leader said in Hamilton.

They provided more of a complementary role and should not be considered a “poor man's bank," Mr A. A. Bailey, the executive director of world programmes for the World Council of Credit Unions, said in an interview.

Mr Bailey, who was born in Jamaica and who last year won the International Co-operative Development Award from the United States Co-operative Movement. is in New Zealand on a four-day visit to credit union districts.

Banks were becoming far more personally orientated because they were discovering through the operation of credit unions the need to be concerned about people, he said.

"A credit union is not just a way of doing business, it’s a philosophy of life.

"And if it is to be sustained as such there will have to be a hard core of philosophers willing to make sacrifices to establish it to the point where it will continue to run under its own momentum." Credit unionism was often the first “tool" in underdeveloped countries for developing the people’s responsibility to do something for their own development, Mr Bailey said. “It is a good antidote for one of the legacies of colonialism — the dependence on others for the solution of problems for development and advancement.”

In developed countries where credit unions were .not required to make people aware of their responsibilities as citizens, it had wider functions such as educating in the wider use of resources and improving the quality of life.

"The increase in material goods has not always improved the quality of life, in many Western countries the increase in material goods has been such that it has brought about a deterioration in human values. “The credit union concentrates on the fact that man does have a responsibility for the economic and social development of his community and his country,” he said.