Hydro Credit launches 70,000-member school savings club

Hydro Co-operative Credit Union Limited (HCCUL), the second largest credit union in the country in terms of assets, has launched a School Savings Club with a current membership of 70,000 for students in the country.

The School Savings Club is a financial inclusion initiative that focuses on inculcating savings culture in children across the country.

A release issued by the HCCUL and copied to the Daily Graphic said the launch, which brought together pupils from different schools across the region, was done by the Chairperson of HCCUL, Ms Love Grace Ofori, at the annual General Meeting (AGM) in Akosombo.

She reiterated the importance of savings and financial management in a child’s life. However, she advised members of the various savings clubs not “to steal money” from parents and guardians to invest in their accounts, but rather manage what was given to them and they would have no regrets joining the club.

She added that ingenuity was necessitated by a recent Global Findex Database collected from 144 countries, including Ghana, which showed that about seven million Ghanaians were not financially inclusive; indicating that the country was still struggling with the problem of decreasing the unbanked population.

That, she said, was a major challenge to the global objective of the Sustainable Development Goal One (SDG1) that aims at alleviating poverty through financial inclusion with focus on the micro and informal sectors.

AGM

The AGM brought together members of the union, regional and national heads of the Ghana Co-operative Credit Unions Association (CUA) Limited, stakeholders in the Ghanaian financial sector.

Ms Ofori emphasised that the union existed so that its members would have lifetime freedom.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Hydro Co-operative Credit Union, Mr Joseph Garti, led the discussion on the annual and audited report, as well as the approval of the budget for the 2018/2019 financial year.

A member of the union, Mr David Boahen, commended the management and staff for their diligent and dedicated service that had earned the union its current reputation as the second largest credit union in Ghana and its Chief Executive Officer, Mr Joseph Garti, the Best Credit Union Manager for the year 2018. Another member, Mr Kenneth Kojo Obeng, also commended the management and staff for their efforts and called for a review of the process involved in loan acquisition by members of the union. The percentage of dividend raised a lot of deliberations but a consensus of 25 per cent payable to members was reached.

Elections scheduled to choose new executives to the various committees and board of directors during the AGM was however postponed by the Eastern Regional Division of the Electoral Commission after a consultative meeting with contesting candidates, officers from CUA and management of Hydro Credit, to a date that is yet to be communicated to members.