The Chief Executive Officer for Steinbach Credit Union says 2021 was a year like no other.

"It was an amazing year," says Glenn Friesen. "In fact, it was almost surreal."

When you take a look at some of the numbers that SCU produced in 2021, you get a picture of what Friesen is talking about. In their 80th year of operation, SCU reached $8 billion in total assets and hit 100,000 members.

But that is not all. In 2021, SCU also had loan growth of over 16 percent and deposit growth of more than 11 percent.

"Those are huge numbers," says Friesen. "We really haven't seen them that large forever."

SCU remains the largest credit union in our province. However, that title will most likely be removed later this year. Friesen says when the merger between Access, Noventis and Sunova is approved as of July 1st, the new credit union will have slightly more assets than SCU.

SCU held its annual general meeting Tuesday night and used that opportunity to announce a cashback member bonus of $10 million, tying their largest cashback ever provided to members.

"We are thrilled to share this bonus with our loyal members," says Board Chair Maria Reimer. "This is further proof that our members truly make us great and that when we work together to meet our challenges, we emerge stronger collectively."

The bonus will be shared with members who hold both deposit and lending accounts. The breakdown of this allocation will be 60 percent to deposit holders and 40 percent to credit holders. According to SCU, this breakdown recognizes that members with deposits have been impacted by lower interest rates over the last year. In contrast, borrowers have benefited from lower interest rates.

Also Tuesday night, results were released from their board elections. The membership has re-elected Chris Goertzen and also elected board members Bonnie Goertzen and Kris Plett to the SCU board of directors. The board of directors elected Maria Reimer as Board Chair, Bruce Penner as First Vice-Chair and Chris Goertzen as Second Vice-Chair.

Friesen says surprisingly, two incumbents were not elected.

"It was a little bit of a surprise," says Friesen. "Reg Penner didn't get elected and Rob Penner didn't get elected."

According to Friesen, Reg Penner served for 21 years, many of those years as Board Chair. Rob Penner had also been a board member for many years.

Meanwhile, Friesen has provided an update on their Linden Ridge Branch in Winnipeg on McGillivray Boulevard. In January of 2020, SCU announced plans to rebuild that branch. But, Friesen says the tenders came back very high and then COVID-19 sort of put that project on hold. They are now considering two options, either building new in that parking lot or rebuilding on site. Friesen says hopefully in the next month or so they will get some answers in order to make a decision.