Breaking: Credit Unions Getting on with Helping People

Community 3 min read

01 May 2020

The great Irish poet Seamus Heaney once said “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere”. It certainly seems appropriate for the times which we are living through. With much of the country cocooning and with hundreds of thousands of people having lost their jobs or been temporarily laid off, doubt, worry and confusion are prevalent in almost every household.

While people are rightly preoccupied with concerns about the health of their families and their nearest and dearest, thoughts are very quickly turning to the financial implications of the current crisis and how individuals and families might cope in the coming weeks and months.

As community based, not-for-profit financial institutions owned by members, credit unions would love to be in position to provide certainty to members on what will happen next or a definitive view on what the future may hold.

The truth is that we, like everyone else, do not know how long the current crisis will last. We don’t know when the current restrictions will be fully lifted. We don’t know when or if the situation will get back to what can be viewed as ‘normal’.  

What we do know, is that credit unions will treat their members with empathy, honesty and respect and do everything that they can to provide help and support at this critical time. You’ll be treated like you own the credit union. That’s because, as a member, you do.
 

Support Measures

When it comes to the measures available to people in financial difficulty, you may have read or heard about measures which the banks have taken to provide to their customers with ‘relief’. You’ll forgive our cynicism when we read some of the more fawning commentary about some of these measures. The necessity of the establishment of an Irish Banking Culture Board in recent times might tell you all you need to know about banks’ motivations and the need to bring about significant change to the ways in which Irish banks treat their customers.

Credit unions, as they’ve always done, have taken a more personalised approach to assisting people at this time. Every credit union is independent and takes decisions at local level. Credit unions are working locally with members to work out the best solution for their individual circumstances. In short, they are getting on with helping people.

So how is this support provided? Credit union staff are working tirelessly to deal with the huge number of members who have been in touch at this time. For a number of essential services, this support will be provided within the credit union office itself. For many more it will be on the phone, via email or online. Indeed, in some cases, credit unions have set up a home delivery service to support cocooning, elderly or more vulnerable members.

Listen, Understand, Help

For credit unions, every member is important. People aren’t simply account numbers. They are not ‘profit centres’. Credit unions will not seek to maximise the revenue which can be extracted from them. Rather, credit unions recognise that every person is faced with their own unique challenges and no one solution will be appropriate for everyone. Whether a person needs to access their savings, needs to freeze loan repayments, needs to restructure a loan or maybe needs an emergency top up loan, they will find that a credit union staff member will be on hand to firstly listen, understand and then seek to offer help and support.

“Credit unions are helping people” won’t be the headline on the front of a national newspapers any time soon. You won’t wake up to hear a radio bulletin leading with “Credit unions are treating members with empathy and respect”. Why? Because credit unions do this day in day out. Credit unions will continue to get on with actually helping people and providing practical supports which make a real difference in the lives of ordinary people.

Credit unions have helped members come through dark winters and uncertain times before. Your local credit union is here for you today and it will be here for you when your summer comes too.