Co-operate or Control? Credit Union Wealth Management in Canada

In November 2016, the chief executive officer of Credit Union Central of Manitoba was reading the report Credit Union Wealth Management Strategic Option Assessment, which he had commissioned several months earlier. He saw the report as the best and potentially last chance to fix a long-standing problem in the Canadian credit union sector, which comprised democratically-controlled, member-owned financial co-operatives that were sometimes referred to as “people’s banks.” Credit unions had been struggling to advance in the wealth management industry and compete effectively against Canada’s “Big Five” banks. The report set out three strategic options that looked promising. However, experience had shown that nothing was simple in the credit union industry, where disagreements were common among opposing groups such as big versus small, rural versus urban, French versus English, and liberal versus conservative credit unions.