On Monday, April 24th the Churchbridge Credit Union held their annual AGM at the Langenburg Community Centre.
Brenda Becker, President of the Board of Directors, opened the meeting and read the minutes from the last annual general meeting held on April 25, 2022.
Message From the President
Becker said to the attendees, “I am very happy to report a successful year for Churchbridge Credit Union…In 2021, our Board had to make some financially responsible decisions regarding the payout of patronage. I am happy to say we were able to declare a patronage payment based on our 2022 financial results. We continue to invest in our communities with our Community Investment Program”.
The board of directors will see some new faces joining the team. Wendy Lutz, a long-time Board member of over 20+ years, has decided to retire. Jennifer Marlowe moved out of the country late last year leaving a term position to be filled through the nomination process this spring. Judy Miller has also decided to step down after serving a full term of 3 years. Howard McCullough signed on for another term with the board. The three remaining positions were voted in by acclamation. The new members of the board include Janelle Herechuk, Michael Dirven and Kristen Groeneveld. Those returning to their position on the board includes Brenda Becker (President), Howard McCullough (Vice-president), Kevin Popp (Director), Marilyn Debnam (Director)
Brenda added, “I sincerely want to thank these dedicated Board members for their cooperation, input and commitment to the rest of the Board and our Credit Union. We will certainly miss you”.
CEO Ryan Tebbutt read the financial statements and spoke about the current state of the credit union.
“Our income prior to our Member Profit Sharing Dividend and Retained Earnings allocations was $4,210,488 and was distributed as follows: Member Profit Sharing Dividend $ 385,000 Retained Earnings $3,825,488.”
“Our 2022 profitability was up $3,709,759 from the prior year. This was a drastic change from 2021 due to a few of reasons. In 2021, we had files which we had to make a hard decision to set allowances on. In turn, the Board of Directors had to make the difficult, yet financial prudent decision to not declare a patronage payment in 2021. In 2022, the high inflation led the government to increase rates to reduce inflation. Prime increased by 4% over the course of 2022. This led to an increase to interest revenue and interest expenses. The expense side increased faster as many members have been investing in short-term products, so they were able to take advantage of deposit rates not seen in many years. The repricing to market loan rates will take a bit longer. Products tied to variable rates were affected immediately. Products locked into fixed rate products, upon their maturities or new products, will reprice at the current market. We expect to see our margins tighten up from past years until the loan side reprices to market as much of the deposit side is already at market prices. Our provision for expected loan losses also reduced significantly by $1,235,921 in 2022.”
The sale of an asset by SaskCentral also brought the credit union a large boost in income. Tebbutt explained, “As you may be aware, all Saskatchewan credit unions are owners of SaskCentral. SaskCentral can declare patronage or dividends to their owners if they’ve met their regulatory and policy requirements. SaskCentral was a key owner of Concentra Financial. Concentra Financial entered into a sale agreement with Equitable Bank. SaskCentral passed through much of the profit of Concentra to the Saskatchewan credit unions. The sale price was finalized in 2022, but all credit unions did not receive the proceeds until early 2023. A one-time accounts receivable was set up before year-end, so this income was recognized in the correct year of the sale. Without these sale proceeds, Churchbridge Credit Union would still have had a very comparable, and profitable, year to other years, 2021 excluded”.
The Credit Union will pay, for 2022, 9.1% of year-end profits back to members in the form of a Member Profit Sharing Dividend. This amounts to $385,000 in Member Profit Sharing Dividends for 2022. This is a total of $6.52 million paid out in the last 23 years.
Financial Results
The financial overview stated, “Assets at year-end were $249,257,646, which includes both “on book” assets of $221,606,871 and “off book” mutual funds amount of $27,650,775. This is an increase of $7,456,150 or 3.1% over 2021. Even with operations through a pandemic over the past few years, we continue to see decent growth. Both loan and deposit growth were strong throughout 2022”.
Member Loans
“Our member loans, which form most of our assets, at year-end were at $170,600,556, which is up from $158,502,347 or 7.6% from 2021. Our overall delinquency at year-end was at 0.55%, which is a decrease of 1.38% from 2021. Our over 90-day delinquency was at 0.33%, which is a decrease of 1.45% from last year’s total of 1.78%. In 2022, we approved, renewed, extended or amended 823 loans, which is up 77 from the previous year. In dollars, this amounted to $84,940,028 in loans, which is up $12,327,108 or 17% from 2021.”
There was a large increase in approved loans in 2022 compared to 2021. “In terms of approved loans only, in 2021 approved loans totaled $37,657,627 and in 2022 the approved loans totaled $47,232,913. This was an increase of 25.4%.”
Long Term Service Awards
Awards were given for service at the AGM. Gaylene Putland (25 years), Andrew Barker (20 years), Cheryl Kitz (15 years), Courtney Bennett (15 years), Elliana Margarit (15 years), Randi Jacobs (5 years), Chelsea Rathgeber (5 years) and Howard McCullough (5 years – Board).
Betty Gordon provided the meal and motivational speaker Darci-Lang provided the entertainment after the meal.