Co-ops encouraged to go for Gold!
Co-ops are not charity organizations, but rather enterprises that serve members and the community. And the key to excellent service and sustainability is to meet Asian standards.
This was the gist of NATCCO Consultancy Team & Knowledge Resource Center’s free webinar on Access Branding Attended by 34 participants from different cooperatives nationwide last May 15.
Main speaker was Dindo Meroy, ACCESS Brand Officer of NATCCO Network who urges cooperatives to aim to achieve ACCESS standards.
ACCESS stands for “A1 Competitive Choice for Excellence in Service and Soundness”. The Brand stands for assurance that a co-op is managed according to Asian standards.
Meroy stressed: “ACCESS Branding aims to provide quality products and services to improve the lives of the members . . . products that the cooperative needs to deliver with a competitive advantage.”
He added: “Access Branding balances financial standards and social awareness. The standards is about sustaining what we have started to maintain the cooperative identity.
After all, a co-op cannot serve its members and improve their lives without first ensuring sustainability.
“Access Branding helps differentiate co-ops from other financial players, it also helps to convey our message in terms of financial freedom and values,” he said.
ACCESS eyes the Financial structure, where funds go, net institutional capital, Asset Quality for non-earning assets, Rates and return of cost, Liquidity and signs of growth for membership and assets.
Meroy also discussed the point system “Member-Customer Perspective has the highest number of indicators with 108 equivalent score.”
Thus, ACCESS is about financial and qualitative discipline.
Sharon Marie Dy, Head of the NATCCO Stabilization Fund gave the difference between PESO and PEARLS Standards in peso structure savings: “Set certain standards to be followed, improve the process to create happy members. There is no perfect time to get branded. Any time is perfect to serve our member. If you feel you are not ready get in touch with your federation.”
Glenn Medez, Head of NATCCO Consultancy, said co-ops must promote financial literacy and developing products on Emergency Savings Loans. This discipline will help cooperatives in times of crisis.
With NATCCO’s guidance over several years, Tagum Cooperative is the first and only co-op given the Gold ACCESS Award at the 2019 Forum of the Association of the Association of Asian Confederation of Credit Unions (ACCU) in Kuala Lumpur.
Tagum Cooperative bests 31,752 cooperatives in Asia.
Tagum Cooperative’s Net institutional capital is 11 percent, or around P834 Million. Prior to ACCESS, it was 6 percent.
“TC is also over-provided. As of March, over-provision is P106 Million. They have already more than covered their credit risk. Even if their Net Surplus goes down because of the COVID Crisis, members do not feel it as they can afford not to have provisioning expense.”
PAR 1 is 11%, the result of discipline.