Raphael John-Lall

De­spite the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape, chief op­er­at­ing of­fice of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T, Di­anne Joseph, is as­sur­ing the pub­lic that cred­it unions across the coun­try con­tin­ue to en­list new mem­bers.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, she spoke about the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, plans for the cred­it union sec­tor in 2026 and some of the ini­tia­tives the cred­it union body has for the year ahead.

She said the League rep­re­sents the in­ter­est of 763,000 mem­bers; 133 cred­it unions and TT$20 bil­lion in as­sets and they are heav­i­ly fo­cussed on ex­pand­ing these num­bers in the 2026.

“De­spite the stag­na­tion in some com­mer­cial sec­tors, cred­it unions con­tin­ue to see a steady stream of new mem­bers. In times of eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty, cit­i­zens tra­di­tion­al­ly view the cred­it union as a ‘safe haven’, “ she said.

She ex­plained why the pub­lic con­tin­ues to see cred­it unions as an op­tion dur­ing times of un­cer­tain­ty.

“Un­like oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, our mem­ber-owned struc­ture of­fers a lev­el of sta­bil­i­ty and em­pa­thy that be­comes high­ly at­trac­tive dur­ing a re­ces­sion­ary cli­mate. While the ‘slow Christ­mas’ re­port­ed by re­tail­ers sug­gests a re­duc­tion in im­me­di­ate con­sump­tion, it of­ten cor­re­lates with an in­crease in cred­it union share sav­ings. Our mem­bers are choos­ing to pre­serve their cap­i­tal and pur­sue prov­i­dent and pro­duc­tive loans. We have not seen a dras­tic de­cline in any spe­cif­ic are of our busi­ness.”

She said that the cur­rent macro­eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment has had the im­pact of cre­at­ing “cau­tious con­sumers.”

“The macro­eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment in ear­ly 2026 re­flects a pe­ri­od of pro­found con­sumer cau­tion. The clo­sure of ma­jor en­ti­ties like News­day and the re­port­ed sales de­clines in the re­tail and fast-food sec­tors are clear in­di­ca­tors of a ‘wait-and-see’ ap­proach by the gen­er­al pub­lic. For cred­it unions, this man­i­fests as a shift in bor­row­ing pat­terns. While we are not nec­es­sar­i­ly see­ing a de­cline in the num­ber of mem­bers, we are see­ing a shift in the pur­pose of loans. Mem­bers are piv­ot­ing away from lux­u­ry and con­sumer spend­ing to­ward ‘ne­ces­si­ty bor­row­ing’, such as home re­pairs, med­ical ex­pens­es, mo­tor ve­hi­cle and ed­u­ca­tion. This cau­tious sen­ti­ment is a ra­tio­nal re­sponse to an un­cer­tain mar­ket, and the move­ment is ad­just­ing its risk as­sess­ments to match this re­al­i­ty.”

All is not doom and gloom as she re­ferred to the salary in­crease and back­pay for pub­lic ser­vants, which she said will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the cred­it union move­ment.

“On the flip side, the re­cent salary in­creas­es and back­pay for pub­lic ser­vants have pro­vid­ed a sig­nif­i­cant and time­ly boost to the sec­tor. We have ob­served that many pub­lic ser­vants are util­is­ing these ad­di­tion­al funds strate­gi­cal­ly—pri­mar­i­ly for debt con­sol­i­da­tion. In some cas­es, mem­bers are us­ing their in­creas­es to set­tle high-in­ter­est loans and oth­er debts, mov­ing those li­a­bil­i­ties to their cred­it unions where in­ter­est rates are more man­age­able. This “flight to safe­ty” is con­sid­ered a smart move.”

She added that while there is a view that the wider re­tail econ­o­my may be strug­gling, the cred­it union move­ment re­mains a re­silient pil­lar of sup­port, help­ing mem­bers nav­i­gate 2026 with a fo­cus on debt re­duc­tion and long-term fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty.

Reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards

Joseph said the cred­it union move­ment en­ters 2026 nav­i­gat­ing a land­scape of in­creased fis­cal scruti­ny and reg­u­la­to­ry evo­lu­tion.

“There have been amend­ments to the reg­u­la­tions to re­main com­pli­ant with the stan­dards as rec­om­mend­ed by the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF). We agree that this is nec­es­sary. As such, we have been work­ing with our mem­bers to en­sure that the An­ti Mon­ey Laun­der­ing/Counter Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism and Counter Pro­lif­er­a­tion Fi­nanc­ing re­quire­ments (AML/CFT/CPF) of com­pli­ance in our cred­it unions re­main strong.”

She al­so said that there may be the need for ad­di­tion­al staffing or an up­grad­ing of the com­pe­ten­cies of their Com­pli­ance Of­fi­cers.

“This is like­ly to in­cur an ad­di­tion­al cost. How­ev­er, our cred­it unions are sup­port­ed in this area by our League that has a strong Com­pli­ance Shared Ser­viced Plat­form and that re­duces cost.”

While she said cred­it unions, in large part, own their own build­ings. A low­er num­ber are in a rent­ed space.

“We have not had any ad­verse re­ports of an in­crease in rent due to the re­quire­ments for land­lords to reg­is­ter and pay tax­es. At this time, we al­so do not have any re­ports from our ex­tend­ed mem­ber­ship that in­di­cat­ed an in­crease for the home/apart­ment that they have been rent­ing. As such, we can­not con­firm that there is any need for alarm in this area.”

De­spite this, how­ev­er, she said the League re­mains vig­i­lant in its mon­i­tor­ing to ob­tain reg­u­lar feed­back about any im­pact that the new fis­cal mea­sures may have on the cred­it union sec­tor.

“Tech­no­log­i­cal re­silience and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty re­main at the fore­front of our 2026 agen­da. With the in­creas­ing so­phis­ti­ca­tion of fi­nan­cial crimes, cred­it unions have been re­mind­ed to set aside the nec­es­sary cap­i­tal to treat with any need for ad­di­tion­al dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty and in­fra­struc­ture. This is a non-ne­go­tiable ex­pen­di­ture to pro­tect mem­ber da­ta, but it may pose a chal­lenge for small­er units. In this re­gard, we are pur­su­ing op­tions with ex­perts in this area to pro­vide a shared ser­vice to sup­port these small units.”

She added that the League has been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with its line min­istry, the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment with the aim of achiev­ing amend­ments in the leg­is­la­tion to en­sure that “low-hang­ing items” such as the en­cash­ment of gov­ern­ment cheques by cred­it unions; the ac­cep­tance of busi­ness­es as mem­bers and the amend­ment of the law which ad­dress­es the is­sue of sums paid to a ben­e­fi­cia­ry up­on the death of a mem­ber is ur­gent­ly up­dat­ed.

These have been on the agen­da un­der sev­er­al gov­ern­ments and she said they be­lieve that it will be­come a re­al­i­ty this year, she said.

New head of­fice

Jospeh said 2026 marks a trans­for­ma­tive era for the League, an­chored by sev­er­al high-im­pact ini­tia­tives de­signed to for­ti­fy the move­ment.

While the or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­ready lo­cat­ed in Ch­agua­nas, she added that it is cur­rent­ly in the process of ac­quir­ing prop­er­ty at a new lo­ca­tion in Ch­agua­nas for their head of­fice.

“Cen­tral to this vi­sion is the land­mark ac­qui­si­tion of our na­tion­al head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas and a com­pre­hen­sive re­brand­ing ex­er­cise. These moves are not mere­ly cos­met­ic; they rep­re­sent a com­mit­ment to en­hanced tech­no­log­i­cal out­reach and a mod­ernised im­age for the League.”

In ad­di­tion, she said they are ag­gres­sive­ly ex­pand­ing their Shared Ser­vices Plat­form which is a strate­gic move to pro­vide small­er cred­it unions with af­ford­able, high-lev­el ac­cess to crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal ser­vices, in­clud­ing pro­fes­sion­al ac­count­ing and op­tions for ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

“A cor­ner­stone of our 2026 agen­da is the 26th An­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, sched­uled for May 28th to June 1 in Pana­ma City. This glob­al fo­rum is de­signed to sharp­en the gov­er­nance ca­pac­i­ty of our lead­er­ship and cul­ti­vate strate­gic part­ner­ships and al­liances. A high­light of this year’s con­fer­ence will be the height­en­ing of ef­forts to­wards a spe­cialised ex­change pro­gramme, fa­cil­i­tat­ing a di­rect trans­fer of skills and in­no­va­tion be­tween lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it unions. By em­brac­ing these glob­al tech­niques, our mem­bers will be bet­ter equipped to en­hance their prod­ucts and ser­vices, ul­ti­mate­ly el­e­vat­ing the cred­it union brand to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards of ex­cel­lence and en­sur­ing its long-term re­silience.”