ABCUL Host its Community Development Credit Union Launch Event

Friday 27 September 2024

This week, Thursday 26 September the Association welcomed credit unions and stakeholders to Liverpool to launch its Community Development Credit Union (CDCU) project.

A community development credit union is a credit union with a mission of serving low- and moderate-income people and communities. CDCUs specialise in serving populations with limited access to safe financial services.

Speaking to attendees of the event, ABCUL CEO, Robert Kelly spoke about the project’s vision: “Our objective is crystal clear – we want credit unions to be strong, sustainable, innovative and have a desire to fulfil their mission and vision by expanding their reach in communities, households and employers all across the country and the CDCU designation can be a real growth catalyst for those who wish to pursue.

“We also want to ensure that the development agenda for those involved in the CDCU designation process can be aligned to the wider financial inclusion and community empowerment objectives of national government, local government and key sector partners and stakeholders. Driving this collaborative agenda will deliver real and positive change.”

The inspiration for the Community Development Credit Union (CDCU) pilot project and the creation of this white paper/call to action has originated from ABCUL’s discussions and interaction with the North American credit union system over the last 10+ years – particularly its innovative partnership with Inclusiv (USA based credit union trade association).

Inclusiv have been supporting credit unions for over 50 years, providing a network of support, education, and advocating for its members and are now looking forward to how they evolve and adapt to serve the needs of their member credit unions and the communities they serve for the next 50 years.

SVP Capital & Investments, Cathi Sim from Inclusiv attended the event providing an inspiring insight into the journey that so many comparable credit unions across the USA have embarked on for so many years. Cathi said: “Credit unions who have focused on gaining CDCU certification and status have made a tremendously strong commitment to enhancing their product and service range, embedding financial education and member support programmes and ensuring there is a common development theme between board governance, mission, vision and purpose and the operational/member experience.”

Next up on the agenda, the CDCU project’s Data Analyst, Ian Goodliffe presented his findings which aimed to determine whether credit unions are actually serving the demographics that drive their mission and strategy.   The data has proved that the financially vulnerable and low- & moderate-income people and communities form the majority of the pilot credit unions member base, both for savings and loan accounts.

The final session of the day was a panel-based discussion with members of the pilot group of our CDCU project, featuring Celtic Credit Union, Enterprise Credit Union and Lewisham Plus Credit Union, giving their insight about their objectives and aspirations for the years ahead. Charing the panel, Robert Kelly stated: “Credit unions are perfectly positioned to offer wider support to the key demographics and ‘Priority Groups’ that we can now evidence we serve as a sector. Increased support will enable credit unions to expand their ability to reach the financially vulnerable and excluded members of society.

Full reading of the published white paper report about the project is available here.