New Pathway.
On April 19, 2015, Ukrainian Credit Union Limited held its 72nd Annual General Meeting. The year 2015 became the best year ever for the credit union by financial results. UCU’s Chairman of the Board Andre Sochaniwsky and CEO Taras Pidzamecky in their speeches provided some insight into UCU’s financial results. In particular, in 2015, UCU achieved a record net profit after taxes of $2.16M, a 10.2% growth from $1.96M in 2014. This growth was attained despite persistently low interest rates, which weighed on UCU’s revenues, and thanks to the prudent interest rate pricing, strong non-interest revenues and other successful strategies.
In his speech at the AGM, Andre Sochaniwsky noted that UCU is currently one of the 15 largest credit unions in Ontario by asset size. Taras Pidzamecky informed that, in 2015, UCU’s assets grew by $37.93M to $712.97M. In 2015, UCU provided 315 mortgages to its members for a total of $87.19M.
In 2015, the credit union compared favorably with its peer group by different financial indicators. In particular, UCU’s operating expenses amounted to just 1.96% of its total assets while the same ratio for the Ontario credit unions as a whole was at 2.66%. UCU’s regulatory capital at the end of 2015 reached $46,52M and exceeded the levels set by the government for the leverage and risk ratios.
UCU members benefited from many improvements and innovations in products and services last year. In February 2015, UCU released a mobile upgrade with several new features: mobile banking users can now add and delete bill payees, build and import contacts from smartphones, set up current transfers, etc. It was announced at the AGM that, starting June 2016, UCU members will be able to use their smartphones to deposit cheques. As well, around the third quarter of this year, the Credit Union is planning to introduce personal financial management via the internet banking portal. The biggest technological change last year was the banking system conversion. The new system is a lot more robust and will help UCU to provide quality services for its members in the years to come.
Ukrainian Credit Union continues to support the Ukrainian Canadian and wider communities. UCU is the only Ukrainian credit union present in more than half of the Ukrainian communities in Ontario beyond GTA. It continues its own long-standing traditions and the traditions of almost ten community credit unions that have merged with UCU over the years. In 2015, UCU provided over $800 thousand to the community through donations and marketing support, and injected $1.7M to operate its local branches, maintain the Ukrainian community infrastructure, and provide dozens of high quality jobs in the cities where UCU is the only Ukrainian financial institution. The credit union continued to support the community media, including the New Pathway, with paid advertising and donations.
UCU also continued to support Ukraine at this time of crisis. The AGM passed a resolution that all membership dividends on regular shares for 2016 be diverted to the humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Some of the organisations and projects, which UCU supported last year with respect to Ukraine, are Patriot Defence, Toronto Euromaidan Committee, Help us Help the Children, Ambulance for the ATO and Canada Ukraine Foundation. The UCU staff members initiated a committee “UCU helps Ukraine” which has raised more than $75,000 and provided aid to 44 Ukrainian soldiers. In June this year, two of the soldiers are planning to come to Canada for a tour of local communities to share their experiences and help raise additional money for their friends and colleagues in Ukraine. In terms of assistance at home, some of the organisations and charities that UCU supported included the Ivan Franko Homes, the UNF Toronto-West Ukrainian School, The Blue Door Café soup kitchen in Sudbury which helps indigenous people in that community where UCU has a branch, Ukrainian Canadian Documentation Center, and Vesnivka Choir.
At the AGM, a UCU Director Oleh Marianchuk announced this year’s winners of UCU scholarships. Each year the UCU awards scholarships to deserving students who show a high level of academic achievements in their field and their dedication to the community. This year, the UCU’s Scholarship Committee awarded five scholarships worth $1,000 each for community leadership to the following young people: Elizabeth Zienchuk (Toronto) studying Businesses Administration and Financial Math at Wilfrid Laurier University; Maxsym Lysyk (Oshawa) studying Civil Engineering at the University of Waterloo; Chrystyna Levytska (Toronto) studying Medicine at Wayne State University in Detroit; Maria Kvitlana Tsap (Mississauga) studying Social Sciences at the University of Toronto; and Michael Fik (Mississauga) studying Architectural Sciences at Ryerson University.
The UCU Wasyl Sytnyk Memorial Scholarship in the amount of $2,500 is awarded to candidate that demonstrates leadership and community involvement, above average academic performance and is studying in a field that will lead to a career within business or finance sectors. This year the recipient is Nestor Masley of Mississauga, currently studying Economics at Harvard University.
The UCU Michael Rebryk Memorial Scholarship in the amount of $2,500 is awarded to a student active in the Ukrainian community and who is in the arts or athletic fields. This year’s recipient is Inga Bekbudova of Toronto. Inga studies Performance Production at Ryerson University. She is a dancer, singer and musician, and often features as a presenter at Kontakt TV.
This year, UCU established a new scholarship – the Ukrainian Credit Union Limited Eugene Roman scholarship in a sum of $2,000, to be awarded to a candidate of a Ukrainian heritage who is in a field of studying that will lead to a career in a technology sector. This scholarship marks the departure of Eugene Roman from the UCU Board of Directors this year. The first recipient of the Eugene Roman scholarship is Roman Protsyk, who is studying Computational and Theoretical Physics.
At this year’s AGM, along with Eugene Roman, two other UCU Directors retired from their positions. One of them is Walter Drozdowsky who has served on the Board for 12 years. He was a member of the UCU Audit Committee from October 2004 to March 2009, and was elected to the UCU Board of Directors in April 2010, where he sat on the Audit Committee and The Project Investment Committee. He has more than 30 years of experience as a senior financial and general manager in growth oriented companies.
Annie Mishchenko, who retired from the Board of Directors after 14 years of service, was at one time the CFO of UCU. She previously served as a director and chair of the audit committee of the Soyuz Credit Union and was elected to the UCU Board of Directors in 2010 when So-Use Credit Union merged with UCU. After the merger, she served as Chair of the Audit Committee and Vice-chair of the UCU Board. She was also a member of the Executive Committee and the Governance Committee of the UCU Board.
Eugene Roman has been a member of the Board for 20 years, 15 of them as Chair of the Board. As part of the orderly succession plan, he stepped down from the Chair of the Board position in 2013 and continued to serve as a Director. During his years as Chair, Mr. Roman helped UCU significantly to grow its asset base and adopt new technologies. He helped gear the Credit Union trough five mergers and acquisitions, including the Ukrainian Sudbury Credit Union, St Demetrius Parish Credit Union, Ukrainian St Catharine’s Credit Union, Soyuz Credit Union and United Ukrainian Hamilton Credit Union, making UCU one of the largest ethnic credit unions in Ontario. Under his leadership, UCU was one of the first credit unions in Ontario to implement a call center. During his time as UCU Director, Eugene also acted as the Group president, Systems and Technologies at Bell Canada Enterprises, then the Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer at OpenText, and now as the Chief Technology Officer of Canadian Tire Corporation. In that position, he was named Canada’s 2015 Private Sector CIO of the year. He is also an award-wining wine maker.
In his short speech at the AGM, Eugene Roman called the years he spent with the UCU Board “golden”. He said that he joined UCU at the offer of Michael Rebryk, the Credit Union’s second chair, who told Eugene Roman, “We just moved from Ottawa, join us. And I did. He taught me a very important lesson: кредитівка як дитина, помагай тій дитині – вона виросте. Let me just wrap up with a couple of words: UCU starts with the letter “U” which makes me think of “unique, uplifting, unbelievably fun, unbelievably resilient, useful to members, u-touch services (which we came up with), unifying, up market, universally accepted, utopian, and most importantly, Ukrainian.”
At the AGM, the members voted in new UCU Directors. This year, there were four positions open for the Board of Directors, three positions were open to all members of UCU and one position was reserved under by-law #1 for a member who is ordinarily a resident of the city of Hamilton or regional municipality of Bolton, or the towns of Caledonia or Grimsby. There were four qualified candidates to fill the vacancies and they were elected by acclimation.
The new Directors are:
Greg Adamowich. He began his membership in UCU in 1989 and was a Board member from 2008-2015, serving as Chair and the member of the Credit committee. With over 30 years of experience in small business, Greg currently manages a portfolio of commercial, industrial and residential properties.
Irena Fedchun. She has been a member of UCU for over 40 years and has previously served on the Board of Directors for 16 years. During that time, she held positions of Vice-chair and Audit Committee Chair, and served on Scholarship and Nominating committees. Currently she is the Director of Finance and Administrations at CIATS – Community Involved Assistance To Seniors and holds positions at such organisations as Villa Colombo and Peel Memorial Hospital.
Peter Malajczuk. Peter is a finance executive who has held finance and operational responsibilities in the telecommunications industry. As Vice-president, Network Field Services Information Technology with Bell Canada Enterprises, he managed over 130 professional staff and $4B in expenditures. He was also a member of the Honor Committee and the Board at BCE.
Olya Sheweli. She has been actively involved in the Credit Union movement for 25 years and is currently President of World Council of Ukrainian Credit Unions and President of Council of Ukrainian Canadian Credit Unions. Olya was on the Credit Committee of the United Ukrainian (Hamilton) Credit Union (UUCU) since 1988 serving three terms, two of those as Chair. In 1991, Olya joined the Board of Directors of UUCU. Olya was first elected as Chair of the Board of UUCU in 2005 and served in that capacity until UUCU merged with Ukrainian Credit Union Limited in 2012. She took a leading role in the successful merger.
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