About Credit Union Consultancy

The Credit Union Consultancy and its components are the result of Barry Stuart Epstein’s life and work experience.  Since 1980 he has worked with his wife Marilynne to build sustainable ventures in the voluntary and business sectors, by making “people” the major business asset, and devising and implementing his successful “Learning and Doing” Process.

A volunteer in the credit union movement since 1993, at one point Barry Epstein was an owner-member of three credit unions - two based in the community, the other in the workplace - serving as a volunteer with two of them.  Currently, he is an active volunteer with a  community based credit union.

Barry’s innovative approach and penchant for practical problem solving comes from mixing “inspiration” with a constant hunger to “learn from others” that has taken him to seminars and conferences throughout the UK and in USA and Thailand.

WE BELIEVE IN ……

Democratising Financial Knowledge and Inclusion

• Creating universal awareness of the purpose of a credit union, and the advantages of becoming a participatory owner-member.
• Creating national recognition and stature to equal that of credit unions and their regional variations throughout the developed and developing world, and make them vibrant communal sources for individual owner-members to
• Create worth through savings and collectively create aggregate funds to make loans so others can achieve their aspirations and better themselves and their community.
• Spreading mutual and co-operative values through equal and shared ownership of credit union businesses regardless the size of their savings account, as owner-members exercise control of their member institutions through duly elected committees.

Some causes of contemporary and generational poverty are the historic and continuous failure to democratise and make available to all existing financial information so that every individual can both understand and manage their own financial affairs.

Maintaining Absolute Independence

For the Credit Union Consultancy and its components, maintaining “independence” is thought to be unique in the UK, as is our dedication to directly working for the interests of our credit union customers only and for no other organisation.

Independence means not competing for or accepting money directly or via partnerships from any Government or public sector body or clearing banks (with retail branch networks – competitors of credit unions) as to do so would put us in competition with our customer credit unions.

Our rejection of Government, public sector or bank funding also makes us free from the burdensome reporting conditions created to fulfil the funders’ own objectives that stifle and take valuable time away from the important business of cooperative owner-membership participation in the affairs of their credit union.