Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
Synergy Credit Union is now accepting nominations for seats on its board of directors and the organization is looking for one director from the district.
The nomination deadline is on Feb. 15 at noon, so the packages have to be completed and submitted before the noon deadline next Friday. Synergy Credit Union has branches in Kindersley and Denzil, and the two branches are located in District 4.
There is one vacancy to be filled in District 4, so there is the potential for an election if more than one person is nominated. People could get a 2019 Director Candidate Information Package online at www.synergycu.ca/DirectorElection or at either of the two branches in the district.
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To be eligible to run, a person must be 18 years old and must have been a member of the credit union for a minimum of one year prior to the Feb. 15 nomination deadline. A person could not have an undischarged bankruptcy, could not be convicted of a criminal offence for theft, fraud or breach of trust and could not be convicted in the past five years of any criminal offence punishable by a term of imprisonment of five years or more.
The person cannot be a professional adviser to the credit union, and the person must use the credit union as his or her primary financial institution to be nominated. The full list of eligibility criteria is available in the package.
Neil Carruthers, vice-president of the Synergy Credit Union board, is chairperson for the board’s Corporate Governance Committee. He said the governance committee runs the process for director elections as part of its duties. The package on the website has all the information a candidate needs, he stressed.
He noted that the board has 12 members and each member serves a three-year term. The terms are staggered, so a total of four seats come up for election each year. Should any incumbent decide to continue, other members could run against the incumbents.
A person must live in the district or hold their membership share in the district to run for a vacancy on the board in the particular district. Carruthers said he encourages members in District 4 to consider running for the vacancy and if an election is needed, it will take place from April 1 to April 9.
Carruthers said the board made a decision at its special policy meeting in October to make a change to the districts. The names of districts now follow provincial electoral boundaries, so District 4 is the Kindersley constituency, he recognized.
The other districts are Cut Knife–Turtleford, Lloydminster and Meadow Lake constituencies excluding the City of Lloydminster, and a district encompassing the City of Lloydminster. The board’s vice-president said the change helps to provide clarity to the district boundaries.
He noted that the role of board members is to provide effective governance and stewardship to the organization. The board leaves the credit union’s management to run the organization’s day-to-day operations. It is important to have a full board.
“It is very important because there is a lot of work that gets done by the committees,” said Carruthers, who has been involved with the credit union for about 10 years, adding that the board has four committees with four members each and a full board allows the directors to spread out the workload.
Carruthers said the credit union is a business worth nearly $1.6 billion, so it is not a small business any more and good governance is important. He added that the financial industry changes all the time, so the board has to keep up with the changes.
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