SANTIAGO, Chile–Most history lessons are aimed at preventing history from repeating itself, but as seven women from the U.S. and Canada trek through Peru and Chile to see how credit unions are working here, they are finding there some history lessons worth repeating.
“The credit unions here are serving the underserved–they’re doing what credit unions in the U.S. were originally founded to do years and years ago–and they’re doing a phenomenal job of it,” said Sue Albrecht, SVP of CUNA Mutual Group’s International Division. “It’s sort of like seeing the U.S. credit union movement back when it still really was a movement.”
And just like the U.S. movement, credit unions in Peru and Chile are growing and evolving well beyond their initial, humble beginnings. But they’re trying to keep those humble beginnings in sight. “In some ways, they are very savvy. They are using [WOCCU’s] PEARLS system and understand the value of metrics. They’re increasingly recruiting higher educated employees, but they’re still going back out there and reaching out to the underserved, and when they’ve helped one group, they go back out and find another.”
At the San Francisco de Huanuco CU in Huanuco, Peru, collaboration and cooperation are still the operative words, right on down to the members themselves–perhaps because members cannot join individually. “The credit union goes out and gets a group of women together and talk about savings and lending, and then as a group they can join the credit union and guarantee each other’s loans,” Albrecht explained.
While credit unions in First World nations pay lip service to being member centric, credit unions here really live up to that moniker. “Every Saturday and Sunday, the farmers and others come into the city to sell their wares, and every single financial institution is closed, except for one–the credit union,” she related. “They really understand what their members need.”
And that is the primary lesson credit unions in the U.S. can learn from their counterparts in South America. “Staying focused on what your customer needs, that’s the lesson,” Albrecht said. “And that means really looking around and understanding the underserved in your communities and what they need from you to succeed. We have to remember that what we see as insignificant is significant to someone else, not just here but also in the U.S. It’s amazing how little goes how far, how powerful a single dollar is.”
