Treasures Report

8th December 2020

Treasurers Report for Financial Year 1/10/2019 to 30/09/2020

 

This year for reasons that I am sure will escape no one, has to be the most difficult year yet in our 28 years of operating Flamesavers Credit Union.  Sadly the prospects for next year do not appear to offer much optimism that’s things are going to improve greatly. Though, if a vaccine is found to be safe and effective, and our ability to move around more freely restored, economically, we are warned, that job losses and personal debt will become a factor in all our lives next year.

Our common bond states that all members should be in receipt of a fire service payroll or pension, and fortunately that means that although we have seen the effects of the pandemic within our members, we have been somewhat shielded from the full force of the problem.

However, several members have asked for our help with loan repayments and savings deductions due to a reduction in their household income due to partners inability to work or closure of their business.

The virus has also made members more wary of committing to further debt, loans granted has reduced, and where loans are taken out, they have tended to be smaller than previous years.

A consequence of this has also been that members have paid loans off early this year and subsequently saved more.

Its is not my intention in the report to analyse every figure but I do need to highlight the more pertinent ones

We started the year holding £3,541,496 in members shares and closed the year holding £3,951,943. This is an increase of just over £400,000. This includes £68,000 given to members in last year’s dividend (2.0%)

If we look at loans, we can see that we opened the year with a loan book of £2,977,788 and closed the year with total loans of £ 2,880,762.  A difference of £-97,000. This is the first year we have ever seen a reduction in our loan total. This includes £188,000 of interest that was added during the year.

If we strip out the loan interest, then we see that we granted a total of £1,224,513 and received repayments of £1,509,596. A reduction in our loan total of £285,000. The number of loans held at the end of the year though was down by 30 on the previous year.

Membership has continued to grow with an increase of 60 new members at the year end.

This year has been our first full year in our new office premises. While we were not forced to leave our subsidised office premises at Hanley, we were offered very little help or encouragement to stay with the organisation. I know that several members expressed concern that the additional costs would have a detrimental effect on our profits, but I am pleased to report that our accommodation cost was approximately £9,200. This year it will cost us around £40,000 for each one percent of any dividend we pay, so our accommodation costs make very little difference to our dividend declaration.

We are a very cash rich credit union, we have around £1,000,000 in investments that are now paying very little in interest and over £500,000 in our current account earning nothing.

Our total net assets now stand at £491,455 a slight increase on last year’s figures.

Our total income this year was £181,335 an increase of only £4000 on last year’s figures and our total expenditure £106,054. This was decrease on last years expenditure of £25. Last years expenditure was higher due to the office move.

So, our surplus this year is £75,281 and increase of £5,000 on last year., this leaves a surplus after corporation tax of £73,767.

As we have already discussed the economic outlook for next year does not look encouraging, so I think it prudent that we do make small increase in our bad debt provision to allow for any problems and as also mentioned our members shareholding has increased considerably. The more members share we hold the more profit we need to make to pay a dividend.

With the auditor’s approval I propose that we pay this year a dividend of 1.5%. this will cost us £60,719.

Lastly, I would like to thank Ann and Lisa for all their help, patience, advice, and encouragement over the last few months, They have embraced, new working practices, to make us all safe within the office, new technologies to enable us to work more easily from home, and gladly suffered the loneliness and extra work from being alone in the office. They are an asset to the credit union and we would not be as successful as we are without them

So, a difficult year, but not so bad that we need to enter this year with a heavy financial heart. We are still in a strong position; the board and staff members are as I say an asset to the credit union.

I am sure we will weather this storm and bounce back from these problems which face us all now.

 

 

News Archive