Since March, the Central Bank has taken over the second largest credit union in the north, St Francis Xavier Credit Union. It's an attempt to stabilize the institution and ensure its survival. With that an administrator was appointed to oversee the credit union's day to day operations, after the Central Bank Governor reported that critical deficiencies in governance and risk management practices were uncovered at the Credit union. Career banker Martin Marshalleck was appointed as the administrator but Friday was his last day in office.
A new Administrator, Marlowe Neal took over effective September first.
We asked the governor - who is the registrar of Credit Union for an update:
Kareem Michael, Governor of the Central Bank of Belize
"When the administrator was appointed, he began working with his team. What he found supported what the central bank was finding throughout the banks offsite, the central banks onsite and offsite examination. In other words that loans weren't properly being assessed in terms of the borrowers ability to repay so a lot that was or a significant portion that some of these loans that were on St Francis's balance sheet were in fact no performing and some of them should have been properly categorized and provisions should have been occurring already to safeguard the interest of the members. So the administrator
began to work earnestly with his team to correct for the poor loan administration that was occurring at St Francis as well as to up the collection efforts which worked or has been working so far. He was able, despite all these challenges to provide a rebate during that not the AGM but the special meeting that was held a couple months ago. So he's setting up the proper governance. He had set up the proper governance frame work and the staff was completely on board with his efforts. I say that because we have a good feeling of St Francis and we want St Francis now in terms of governance and performance to be a model of what credit unions should be."
"A lot of the credit unions have not elevated their governance framework and a lot of the issues which we see in the past that has troubled credit unions have boiled down to governance, weak governance systems within the credit unions. The transition now is that once we have placed in these governance frameworks and other policies and procedures we expect this to be no longer than a year so we are targeting depending on how well we do these things and I mean we in terms of the registrar of credit unions and the administrator and his team is looking as the final date will be next year June so roughly a year and some change and I say June because that's when an AGM could be held or should be held."
Marlowe Neal worked as part of the SFXCU administration team since the Administrator was appointed on 10 March 2023.
