Facing Contemporary Challenges

This was CFCFE’s first conference since the social distancing rules in Great Britain and Ireland made in-person attendance possible, so alongside seventy online participants there were fifteen attendees gathered in Manchester. ‘Facing Contemporary Challenges’ had a wide-ranging agenda, from leadership to regulation to the big issues in the USA, with stimulating plenary and breakout groups discussions.

The summary of the proceedings can be viewed here, including the contact details for presenters, and the presentations and a video for each session can be downloaded below. The two excellent breakout sessions were an opportunity for attendees to share thoughts and ideas freely and were not recorded. A big CFCFE thank you to all presenters and attendees.

Here are the materials by session:

  1. Tributes to Ralph Swoboda RIP from Declan Mooney and Chris Smithvideo. Declan and Chris offered reflections on a dear friend of many people and of the credit union movement.
  2. Lucy Harr and Ciara Davies on leadership – video. Ciara, CEO at Metro Moneywise Credit Union, led a discussion with Lucy based around Lucy’s reports for CFCFE on high performing boards and CEOs.
  3. Séan Murray on a new approach to regulatory capitalpresentation and video. Séan, CEO of Comhar Linn INTO Credit Union and co-author of a CEO Forum paper on how regulatory capital requirements could better address risk in the credit union business model.
  4. Panel session on regulatory issues – video. Jeremy Palmer of the UK’s Building Societies Association chaired a panel discussion of the issues raised by the regulatory capital paper (above), both in Ireland and the UK, and wider topics in relation to regulation. The panel comprised Séan Murray, his co-authors Michael Ahern (CEO, Dubco Ireland Credit Union) and Lorraine Greville (CFO, Life Credit Union), Caroline Domanski (CEO, No1 CopperPot Credit Union and a director of CFCFE) and Ismail Ertürk of Alliance Manchester Business School.
  5. The state of the credit union nation: observations from the USA with George Hofheimer, US credit union consultant – presentation and video. George, formerly of the Filene Research Institute, presented observations about the situation for credit unions, based on his conversations in boardrooms around the USA.