During the 16th Annual General Meeting of Roseau Cooperative Credit Union Limited (NCCU) held on June 3, 2026 at the St Alphonsus Parish Hall in Goodwill, Treasurer Shannon Bedminister delivered a sobering assessment of one of the institution’s most pressing ongoing challenges: persistently high loan delinquency that threatens the cooperative’s ability to serve its membership.
Presenting the official Treasurer’s Report for the 2025 fiscal year, which closed on December 31, 2025, Bedminister outlined concerning figures that go far beyond simple financial accounting. As of the end of 2025, the credit union’s gross delinquent loan portfolio totaled $86,414,304, pushing the overall delinquency rate to 14.07% — nearly three times the 5% PEARLS international benchmark for healthy credit union portfolio performance.
Bedminister emphasized that this delinquency burden is not an abstract corporate issue, but a collective concern that touches every member of the cooperative. Every dollar of unpaid debt, he explained, is money that belongs to the NCCU’s membership base: it draws from individual savings accounts, reduces returns on neighbor-held shares, and erodes the retirement security of working members who have built the institution over decades. These locked-up funds cannot be reinvested to deliver better interest rates, expand member services, or launch new financial products that benefit the entire community, he added.
In line with the cooperative’s community-focused structure, Bedminister called on all NCCU members to engage openly with family, friends and colleagues who hold outstanding loans with the credit union. He urged members to encourage borrowers to meet their repayment commitments, noting that honoring loan obligations benefits not just the credit union’s bottom line, but borrowers’ own long-term financial health and the collective stability of the cooperative community all members rely on.
To address the growing delinquency challenge, NCCU leadership has rolled out a multi-pronged, comprehensive strategy designed to improve portfolio quality and reframe community conversations around loan repayment. The core components of the strategy include:
1. Adoption of the Jack Henry Collections Software platform, which upgrades the credit union’s ability to track delinquent accounts, prioritize high-priority cases, and monitor accounts in real time to enable more proactive account management.
2. A shift to early-stage intervention, where the credit union now dedicates additional resources to working with borrowers who have missed early payments, preventing minor delays from escalating into full non-performing loans.
3. Structured, member-centered engagement, including direct outreach to borrowers, customized payment plans, loan restructuring, and updated refinancing options that give flexible pathways for members to bring their accounts back into good standing.
4. Institution-wide cross-departmental delinquency reduction campaigns that mobilize staff across all branches and departments to conduct active outreach and open communication with delinquent borrowers.
5. A targeted public awareness campaign that uses traditional advertising and social media engagement to remove the stigma around conversations about loan repayment, reinforcing the core cooperative principle that delinquency is a shared responsibility that impacts every member.
Bedminister stressed that the new framework is not focused solely on aggressive debt collection. Rather, its long-term goal is to rebuild a culture of shared financial responsibility and cooperative accountability across all the communities NCCU serves.
Looking ahead to the 2026 fiscal year, NCCU management expresses confidence that the new strategies will deliver measurable improvements to the credit union’s loan portfolio quality. To further strengthen these efforts, the NCCU Board of Directors has put forward a bold proposal for member consideration and approval: the public publication of names of delinquent members. Bedminister noted that this approach has already delivered positive results at other cooperative institutions, encouraging higher repayment rates and reinforcing a culture of collective accountability. The final decision on whether to implement this policy will rest entirely with NCCU’s voting membership, and leadership has stated it values the membership’s guidance as it works to protect the credit union’s long-term financial strength and advance the collective interests of all members.