On 10thSeptember 2021, the Association of Asian Confederation of Credit Union (ACCU) held the 40th Annual General Meeting (AGM). This is the second year ACCU’s AGM was held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the meeting, Mr. Kim Younsik – Chairman of ACCU reported the general operation of ACCU last year (from December 2020 to December 2021). He emphasized that Covid 19 pandemic had significantly affected to the operations of credit unions (CUs) in Asia and all over the world. This was the time for CUs to promote their strengths and cooperative principles and accompany their members. Mr. Kim Younsik believed that the improvement of members’ lives will be the guideline for Asian CUs to overcome the effects of the pandemic and allow early recovery in their operations.
At the AGM, Ms. Elenita V. San Roque – CEO of ACCU, proved that the pandemic has not only led to a health crisis, but also has had serious impacts and created many unprecedented challenges for all aspects of life, society, economy and also CUs. Despite of different levels of impacts in different countries, it could potentially increase the poverty and inequality on a global scale, which means that the achievement of the ACCU’s sustainable development goals was becoming more urgent.
According to Ms. Elenita’s report, the pandemic has caused some limitations and disruptions for ACCU in providingproducts, services and technical support to its members. Last year, ACCU organized a number of virtual training courses on professional skills, finances and governance for members. In addition, ACCU continued building and developing supportingsoft wares such as Interoperable Payment Platform, tool for good governance assessment, etc. Besides that, ACCU has hosted a number of webinars to share experiences of developed CUs systems such as those in Korea and Japan. Every month, ACCU members areinvited to attend a virtual study visit to learn about the operation and organization of a national CU or a member CU.
ACCU has also hosted webinars in the Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal on the ACCESS standard and shared development strategies to meet these standards requirement. Standardized by scorecards, ACCESS includes 86 measurable indicators on 04 main bases: Finance, Customers/Members, Internal Business Processes and Learning &Growth Perspectives, in order to ensure the management quality and the confidence of CUs. In addition, ACCU has continued to focus on developing and implementing training programs for human resources and leaders for CUs in Laos and Timor-Lesteinresponse to the pandemic and global climate change.
As of 31st December 2020, there were 223 ACCU members, including 16 regular members, 12 affiliate members and 195 supporter members. In Asia, the CUs system is present in over 23 countries, with 33,120 CUs serving 48.8 million members andtheirtotal assets isup to $466 billion USD.
At the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Thac Tam – Deputy CEO of Co-opBank thanked ACCU and their members for their donations for some PCFs which suffered from flooding in Central Vietnam in the last months of2020. Mr. Tam also reported about the operations of CUs system and Co-opBank in 2020-2021. During the pandemic, Co-opBank has always promoteditsrole asthe focal point of thePCFssystemby supporting PCFs to develop safely, effectively and sustainably. Over the last year, Co-opBank has increasingly focused onmodern information technology and investedmore resources and coordinated with experts to designsolutions such as E-learning – an online training platform, E-banking… to modernize its products and services. This will strengthenCo-opBank’s ability to support PCFs timely and effectively, but also ensure safety and transparency, especially during the epidemic situation.
At the AGM, ACCU welcomed 02 new members: Puskop Credit Union (Indonesia) and Life and General Insurance Cooperative (Philippines). ACCU members agreed to postpone the voting on the ACCU Board of Directors for the new term until March 2022.Under the 2021-2022 working plan, ACCU will continue to focus on developing business solutions, training programs and online technical support to help national federations and CUs in the responseto the impact of the pandemic, stabilize operations and implement solutions to support members. It is expected that ACCU’s field activities will be resumed from January 2022.
