It breaks my heart to say it, but I’m back in the States. Goodbye fresh fruit and accommodating people at every turn, hello guy-honking-as-soon-as-the-traffic-light-turns-green and 49-cent hotdogs in my freezer.

From the very beginning, Carl Grant (our host, and CEO of Kirkvine CCU, as previously mentioned) made it very clear that we were to see the “Real Jamaica.” During this trip, the real Jamaica included, but was not limited to:

• Roadside fruit stands, each featuring fruit I had never previously heard of, much less tried.
• A southern fishing village with the best restaurant in the entire world.
• A naked guy walking down the road.
• A nation-wide protest by Jamaican Labor Party activists.
• Roadside fruit trees, each featuring fruit I had never previously heard of, much less tried.
• Some of the most action-packed driving to grace God’s earth.
• Cops armed with M-16s.
• The Jamaican dialect potwah, in which I can now say, “Wi da-ance till wi foot batam bun wi.”
• Reggae music on the radio all the time, which is my dream come true.

One of the most striking ingredients of the Jamaican culture, an ingredient our American culture could use more of, is the powerful unification by an unspoken common bond. By “powerful unification” I don’t mean everybody there has a bumper sticker with the Jamaican flag on it. During my stay, I saw the socio-economic lines that affect our interactions so much in the States vanish. The classes are there, very defined upper and lower economic classes. However, conversation seems to flow seamlessly from one class to the next. No one treats the next guy, rich or poor, like he’s anything other than the next guy.

The Movement

Jamaica’s motto is “Out of many, one people.” It’s perhaps this gestalt-driven perspective that has lead half of all Jamaican adults to join credit unions. For the duration of the trip, I never once heard a local referring to the “Credit Union Industry.” Inspirationally, Jamaican credit unions refer to their faction as the “Credit Union Movement.” It begins to sound less like a financial institution and more like an uprising. And in many ways it is.

Cooperative institutions, especially credit unions, are imperative to the country’s economy and to the welfare of the people. Unemployment in Jamaica is officially around 15% (some have said its more like 25%), and a large portion of the employed still fall well below the poverty line. On top of this, taxes are much higher, and so is the overall cost of living.

To put a little more perspective on this, Manchester Co-operative Credit Union, a community credit union with 40,000 members, has around $16.5 million in assets. Dallas Credit Union, one of Trabian’s clients, is a community credit union with 5,500 members and around $30 million in assets.

At one credit union we visited, a man who made $400 per month was applying for a loan. Is there any chance a guy like that could get a loan at a commercial bank? Absolutely not. The President of Manchester Co-operative Credit Union told us that an extremely large portion of their membership comes to them because other institutions won’t even consider them for loans, and they know the credit union will take care of them.

The League

The unification even goes beyond that of members into credit unions. The credit unions of Jamaica are all unified under the umbrella of the Jamaican Co-operative Credit Union League (JCCUL), whose General Manager, Mr. Glen Francis, was kind enough to meet with us at their Kingston headquarters.

The JCCUL has the responsibility of handling all Jamaican credit unions’ regulations, liquidity needs, support, standards, training and even marketing materials, effectively making it the Jamaican equivalent of the NCUA, Corporate Central Credit Union, and the individual credit union leagues. This centralized leadership has translated into Jamaican credit unions being viewed by the nation more as one large entity, as opposed to a cluster of individual institutions. Each credit union displays the World Council of Credit Unions logo as its own, the only credit union to steer away from that is COK (City of Kingston) Credit Union, a mammoth of 100,000 members. As you can imagine, a common brand for all Jamaican credit unions has both its ups and downs. More on that later.

QNET

The JCCUL is in the process of implementing a new tool that will make collaboration between credit unions even simpler. The tool is called QNET which stands for “Quality Network Co-operative Limited.” The QNET will include nationally-synced tools for that include, but again are not limited to:

• data storage
• online and telephone banking
• ATM networking
• customer relationship management
• point-of-sale networking
• online real-time transactions

Once this tool is in place it should help Jamaican credit unions to reach an even higher level of synergy. Kirkvine CCU is expecting to be plugged into the system around January, with others soon to follow.

Coming up

The Jamaican Credit Union Movement is continuing to push and grow by leaps and bounds. But at the same time, the Movement is hitting its fair share of worrisome issues, from new government regulations on the horizon to problems in member communication. In the next post, I’ll be discussing some of these issues, and the serious consequences they could have on the Movement’s development.