Representatives from credit unions in Australia, Canada and the United States recently came together discuss solutions to common industry challenges.
The 17 leaders from the Credit Union Central of Canada, CUNA, Australia's Customer Owned Banking Association and the World Council of Credit Unions met in Sydney, Australia last week to talk about credit union branding, payments and system evolution and regulatory burden and advocacy challenges.
Among the top advocacy challenges in each of the countries was anti-money laundering, Basel III, capital, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, member business lending and taxation, according to the World Council.
The delegation also visited Bank MECU and Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank in Melbourne, two of Australia's largest credit unions that changed their names to a mutual bank. A side-by-side operation of credit unions and mutual banks in the cooperative financial institution space was led by consumer attitudes and regulatory pressures in Australia, the World Council said.
Under the same legislative, taxation and regulatory framework and subject to decreasing consumer awareness, larger Australian credit unions have taken on the name mutual bank and share the common theme of customer-owned banking.
One of the top challenges faced by World Council members and credit unions around the world is the ability to provide payment solutions that respond to consumer demand, the council said. A workshop explored the work of Australian payments agent, Cuscal, to discuss strategies of collaboration or piloting to help position credit unions in payments services to credit unions.
Other areas that were examined included governance challenges and sustainability of small institutions influence the evolution of each system and non-traditional competitors.
Brian Branch, president/CEO of the World Council, said the weeklong meeting with the delegation will help the council with valuable lessons that it can share with the rest of the credit union world that face common branding, payment and regulatory challenges.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to CUTimes.com, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited CUTimes.com content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking credit union news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Shared Accounts podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the commercial real estate and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, GlobeSt.com and ThinkAdvisor.com
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
