Access Credit Union to give back $13.5-M to members

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This article was published 20/04/2024 (317 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Access credit Union is giving back $13.5 million to its more than 200,000 members in 2024.

The news was announced on Tuesday evening during the credit union’s AGM, which showed assets worth $12.38 billion.

“The patronage allocation of approximately 1.12 percent was paid to members on non-registered accounts during 2023. Members who held surplus shares and common or preferred shares excluding member shares earned a dividend paid out in the form of surplus shares,” said board chair Curt Letkeman.

Access announced it had $10.7 billion in deposits; $10.9 billion in loans; and $74.4 million in gross income.

“Both deposit and loan portfolios enjoyed substantial growth this year, in addition to growth as a result of our mergers with Casera and Carpathia Credit Unions. Our loan portfolio had a strong year, despite a rapidly increasing rate environment, and grew 15.89 percent in 2023, 9.57 percent as a result of mergers, and 6.32 percent as a result of organic growth,” said president and CEO Larry Davey.

“Our deposits, buoyed by the same rate increases we saw on the lending side, grew by 13.7 percent, 10.86 percent as a result of mergers, and 2.84 percent as a result of organic growth. With the changes to the rate environment, gross operating margin fell to 14.51 percent from 17.95 percent last year. And gross operating expenses as a percentage of assets grew from 0.95 percent last year, to 1.23 percent this year.”

The credit union also shared it had amalgamated with several other credit unions in Manitoba, including Carpathia, Amaranth, Noventis, Sunova, and Casera.

“Overall, we saw significant jump in our profitability and very, very strong results. Over the last three years, we’ve been hard at work on executing and capitalizing on mergers with other credit unions throughout the province. These benefits continue to be seen in the economies scape, competitive pricing, and community investments that we bring to our members,” said Davey.

The annual report noted $1.8 million invested in communities including $671,322 for health and welfare; $138,541 for education; and $73,734 for arts and culture.

The First Home savings account, which is a tax advantaged registered plan that helps members save for their first home, was also discussed. In 2023, Access members made more than $1.4 million worth of contributions, averaging $4,000 per plan.

“Our launch of the first home savings account, one of the first credit unions in the province to offer this exciting project, is the result of nearly a year of collaboration with credit unions and our partners,” said Davey.

In the annual report, Letkeman stated some of the challenges seen by Access in 2023.

“We acknowledge there have been some challenges during the year, some which we knew would happen, like the banking system conversions required to bring all the legacy credit unions together on one system. There have also been some challenges with outages from the national companies who provide service to all credit unions which have impacted not just Access members but people across the country. We have also seen costs increase for new banking programs and government regulations designed to provide greater security and protect member’s money. These are expensive programs and we’re working together with large credit unions from across Canada to provide the best solutions possible to our members as all financial institutions are facing similar challenges.”