As the new Minister of Finance, Carole James, has several issues on her plate. The two simplest are getting attention, because they are listed in the direction given to her by the new premier. One is taxation, reversing the scheduled increase that faces large credit unions that no longer qualify as ‘small business’. And second, […]
Communications professionals know that you can sell something if you give it a good ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ brand identity. This is the spin we hear all the time regarding a ‘cashless society’. Apparently convenience means more than anything else. But there is a darker side to this proposition; the expanded role of large intermediaries (e.g. […]
The last few decades have seen a huge change in the ‘structure’ of our economy. Rana Foroohar provides an accessible overview of the USA economy in her book Makers and Takers. She notes that over the last thirty years finance, and financial engineering, have come to dominate the world of business and traditional ‘maker’ industries, […]
The leadership at Coast Capital Savings is pursuing the ‘journey’ to become a federal credit union. A few members of Coast Capital have expressed some alarm at the manner in which the consent of members was pushed through to authorize the project. I have also written a couple of posts (Bank?, and Sales Culture). […]
Recently Central 1 has said that changes are planned for credit union director training. The proposed threefold increase in the size of the program invites real scrutiny and critical discussion. It would be one more big burden on small credit unions! In BC currently, directors are required to complete a program that is determined by […]
This week FICOM hosted a conference for BC credit union directors, the sixth such annual event they have mounted. Presentations from commission staff were augmented by a speaker on ‘Building Effective Boards’, Bev Behan. The reporting out on FICOM and CUDIC activity was to be commended and some good questions were raised. And while the […]
Consolidation and cartel building is the long term strategy of the Big Banks and it seems to go on without much alarm. This is partly because of their patience and partly because other players are distracted by other things; technology, risk management, new capital rules, new liquidity monitoring tools, mortgage insurance changes, etc.. But these […]
At a meeting of local credit unions a few nights ago there was good discussion about two competing visions; (1) a network of community based credit unions who collaborate to benefit from economies of scale and (2) a large integrated national back office corporate ‘subsidiary’. There is tension as larger credit unions express impatience, resent […]
Questions are being put to Canadian banks about ethical sales practices. Are consumers being sold things they do not need? Are banks picking people’s pockets? Such questions may also be put to Coast Capital Savings, BC’s second largest credit union, now proposing to be a bank. The members of Coast Capital Savings Credit Union are […]
A headline in Enterprise Magazine provoked me. The text talked about ‘… collectivizing Canada’s provincial centrals and CUSO’s’ when it was introducing an article on the restructuring and streamlining of second tier entities. In fact the reverse is true. In our quest for greater efficiencies (and scale), control is being concentrated in fewer and fewer […]