I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine recently and I was trying to explain to him the difference between credit unions and other financial organizations. My colleague said to me that he doesn’t see the difference between credit unions and banks or even among credit unions. That made me wonder, is this how members of the JTA Co-op Credit Union see us? Do they see a clear difference between us and other financial organizations or not? The question bothered me so, I sat down and thought it would be good to use this post to point out four of the major difference between the JTA Co-op Credit Union and other financial organizations including other credit unions.
The first difference is ownership. Credit Unions are member owned financial organizations; they are characterized by a community of like-minded people who have formed a financial bond to help each other succeed. The, JTA Co-op Credit Union for example was founded by teachers for teachers. Today, even after over sixty years of existence we have held true to the bond and serve only educators. As with any other organizations, it is the person or persons who own the business that realize financial rewards when the organization is successful. That means that whenever the JTA Credit Union realizes a surplus it is redistributed among every member. The Credit Union has over the years, even in tough economic times, paid a dividend to its members in fact, in 2021 the JTA Co-op Credit Union paid over $250m as interest payments divided among all our members. That was a 4% interest rate paid on all shares account. I want to pause here and encourage all educators who are not yet members of the JTA Co-op Credit Union to join us and reap real monetary rewards. Saving with your Credit Union is one of the best ways to keep your money safe. And at the JTA Co-op Credit Union we insure all savings for our members.
The second point of difference is our interest rates. Interest rates have two components, one is that offered on loans and the other that which is paid on savings. Let me start by talking about the interest rates on our loans. Some persons may say that there is no difference on interest rates for loans at the Credit Union as opposed to other organizations. To them I say do some checks, I firmly believe members must be fully informed and make sensible choices and the only way they can be thus is if they do research for themselves. I encourage all members to reach out to us and obtain our loan rates and all attendant costs associated with acquiring a loan. I guarantee that you will find the loan rates offered by the JTA Co-op Credit to not only be competitive but favourable to you.
The other side of interest rates that I want to touch on is the rate of return we offer on savings. However, I am not going to go into that area in today’s post, I invite you to join in my next post where I will outline the difference in the rate of return, we offer on savings. I know you will be pleasantly surprised.
Talk with you then
