If you have been won­der­ing where you could find the best-per­form­ing cred­it union in the coun­try, would your mind wan­der to the south-east end of Trinidad?

But that’s ex­act­ly where it should go as two weeks ago, the Guay­may En­er­gy Al­liance Cred­it Union (GEACU) was named the Most Out­stand­ing Cred­it Union Over­all at the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T’s awards.

It was one of three awards the cred­it union took home that night, with the oth­er two be­ing Most Im­proved Fi­nan­cial Per­for­mance and Best Fi­nan­cial Per­for­mance.

These achieve­ments may come as a sur­prise to peo­ple more fa­mil­iar with more fa­mous cred­it unions around the coun­try. But GEACU pres­i­dent Mar­vin Durham ex­plained that the cred­it union, which is named af­ter the ar­eas it pri­mar­i­ly serves; Guaygua­yare and Ma­yaro has con­sis­tent­ly re­ceived ac­co­lades in the last decade.

“Some of the achieve­ments that we would have had to date, (would be that) from 2014 to present we would have con­tin­u­ous­ly achieved the award of best fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. This is from the Cred­it Union League of T&T. In 2014, we would have al­so copped the award of Best Cred­it Union or Most Out­stand­ing Cred­it Union and we al­so re­turned in terms of do­ing that this year again in 2023, where we al­so copped the award of best per­form­ing cred­it union,” said Durham.

GEACU’s achieve­ments are al­so im­pres­sive giv­en the fact that it co­in­cid­ed with the cred­it union’s de­ci­sion to push to­wards na­tion­al cov­er­age.

The cred­it union has con­nec­tions to the en­er­gy sec­tor, but whilst its name is a com­bi­na­tion of the main ar­eas it serves, its reach has al­ways been na­tion­al, Durham ex­plained.

“The Guay­may En­er­gy Al­liance Cred­it Union, which was for­mer­ly the Amo­co Em­ploy­ee Cred­it Union start­ed in 1975 in our of­fice in Port of Spain. At that time it was a de­ci­sion tak­en by the em­ploy­ees to mit­i­gate against the is­sues of the mon­ey lenders, most of them would have been com­ing from the con­trac­tors. And al­so it was a way of em­ploy­ees help­ing em­ploy­ees in terms of al­le­vi­at­ing some of the chal­lenges that they may have had in terms of meet­ing their ex­pens­es,” Durham told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“Around 1999/2000 we be­came an open cred­it union, mean­ing that we were no longer fo­cus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on em­ploy­ees, but ac­tu­al­ly we ex­tend­ed the mem­ber­ship to per­sons who would have been res­i­dents of the Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare area and even ex­pand­ed that fur­ther in 2015 when we went na­tion­al in terms of gain­ing mem­ber­ship for em­ploy­ees and the cred­it union,” he said.

Amo­co was an oil com­pa­ny that merged with BP in 1998. Since the merg­er, most of its af­fil­i­a­tions in T&T have since been shift­ed un­der the um­brel­la of bpTT.

How­ev­er, the cred­it union has per­se­vered and carved out its own iden­ti­ty as a means of main­tain­ing its con­nec­tion to the area.

De­spite be­ing known as Ma­yaro’s in­dige­nous cred­it union, Durham said the GEACU had man­aged to de­vel­op a fair­ly large fol­low­ing as a re­sult of its con­sis­tent per­for­mance.

“Our mem­ber­ship is cat­e­gorised as large, in the cred­it union. It is ac­tu­al­ly over 8,000 per­sons that we have as mem­bers. We grow or­gan­i­cal­ly in terms of per­sons, who ba­si­cal­ly walk off the street and join our cred­it union, based on the good news and the good of­fers that we have. Most of what we do as it re­lates to com­mu­ni­ty has ac­tu­al­ly seen growth with­in Ma­yaro and Guayagua­yare and we have ac­tu­al­ly con­tin­ued to grow with­in that area and that space and al­so have the sup­port of per­sons in the com­mu­ni­ty,” said Durham.

He ex­plained that the cred­it union has al­so sought to teach fi­nan­cial ser­vices to the up-and-com­ing gen­er­a­tion.

“Some of the things that we do with­in the com­mu­ni­ty have al­so been to the ben­e­fit (of the cred­it union move­ment) in terms of grow­ing our cred­it union move­ment.

So we do have our ju­nior cred­it union co­op­er­a­tive so­ci­ety that we have set up with­in the Ma­yaro Com­pos­ite School, which we re­cent­ly re­sus­ci­tat­ed. And in the past we would have had the ju­nior co-op­er­a­tives done at oth­er sec­ondary schools with­in the area. Name­ly the Rio Claro West and al­so the Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment School,” said Durham, who ex­plained that de­spite Guay­may’s push for greater na­tion­al mem­ber­ship, it would main­tain its com­mu­ni­ty ties.