May 2023 Presidents Message

Annual Report of the President

Virginia Coop Credit Union has experienced significant growth since the beginning of Covid-19. Spurred by stimulus checks, our member’s deposits grew 51% in the two-year period between January 2020 and December 2021. Once Covid-19 abated, we saw a significant increase in pent-up consumer demand. In the two-year period between January 2021 and December 2022 our loan portfolio grew an amazing 88%. This growth is reflected in our financials, as we had a 0.95% Return on Assets and Net Worth growth of 13.7% last year. Both numbers were in the top fifteen percent in growth compared to other credit unions our size nationally. Our staff has done a fantastic job helping us fulfil our membership’s financial goals.

Managing the asset and liability side of growth has been a focus for management and the Board of Directors. Regional bank failures have dominated the news and they have some commonalities. Liquidating long term assets is causing losses and runs on deposits. We do have long term assets on our books, but they were hedged by a larger number of short-term assets that reprice quickly. All four banks that failed had over 60% of their deposits uninsured, causing the run. All but 3% of our deposits are backed by the NCUA share insurance fund. The banks that failed also had a concentration risk of serving a market segment. We understand we also have high exposure to the cyclical mining industry, as we have managed for the past 86 years.

We will be rolling out some products in the next few weeks. Share Certificates (commonly known as CDs) were eliminated with our rapid deposit growth of the past few years. Now that loan demand has caught up to the growth, we will be offering them again. We are also in the process of implementing Mobile Wallet on your debit card which is an application on your mobile phone that allows you to make secure payments via Apple Pay^®, Google Pay^®, and Samsung Pay^®. This will help us offer a competitive and more secure payment option other than checks and physical debit and credit cards.

Thank you again for your support and understanding as we worked our way through the pandemic. Our membership is the reason for our existence, and we look forward to servicing your financial needs well into the future.