Installment towards a better future

Miraflor Lato
CARD, Inc. Unit Manager and CARD EMPC Member from Cebu

Happiness and satisfaction— these are my feelings whenever I see a CARD client happy because of the services he/she availed. I think, this is the very reason why I’m still with CARD after almost a decade- nine years and three months to be exact. CARD gave me the chance to be qualified for the job. They gave me hope during the time when I didn’t have a job and my businesses were down. CARD MRI makes sure that the staff and employees are
well-taken care of while giving services to its clients and members. CARD Employee Multi-purpose Cooperative
(EMPC) is one of their means to do this. EMPC has been one of the walls I lean on during difficult times because they offer different kinds of loans to CARD MRI’s staff.

FLOATING LOANS WITH EMPC
I’ve achieved so much because of the loans offered by the cooperative. On my first loan, I borrowed 9,000 pesos and I used the money for our house renovation. After this, I loaned 50,000 pesos and used it to buy a 138 sq. m lot in my hometown, Danao, Cebu. I then floated a loan amounting to 28,000 and 50,000 pesos which I used for other expenses in our house and additional capital for our piggery business. I also used it for building our new house and gave our former house to my sister. After finishing both cycles, I loaned 90,000 pesos to buy a motorcycle unit for my husband. He uses the unit as his service going to and from work. To date, I have an existing housing loan of 27,000 pesos, which I used for building new pig pens to house our 5 fatteners and 4 swine in order to protect them from sickness. I am now in my 6th loan cycle.

EMPC staff are also accommodating and very approachable. They are compassionate to the staff and assess the staff’s capability to pay their loans. They do not allow loans that will make the staff’s take-home pay very minimal. As much as they can, proper assessment is practiced so that the staff will not suffer from over-indebtedness. Once a loan is denied, they make it a point to explain to the staff why their loan request was not granted, like what they did to me. It is an appropriate approach that allows the staff to understand why they were not granted for the loan and makes room for further negotiations for both parties so that they can arrive to a certain consensus wherein the staff’s take-home pay is not fully compromised.

I can also attest to the sense of urgency EMPC has. It only takes a week for the loan to be released, to think that they handle all CARD MRI’s employees. They also offer reasonable interest rates and have a very unique benefit from EMPC, which most credit institutions don’t have, is the existence of profit shares.

Each member receives profit shares annually based on their contributions and loans. Overall, I am very satisfied to what EMPC is offering us and I couldn’t be happier for their genuine compassion towards CARD MRI staff.

THE ASEAN INTEGRATION
With the introduction of the ASEAN integration, I can say that the services of EMPC will not be affected since their
base market is the staff of CARD MRI and they offer the most convenient payment scheme which is salary deduction. These are some of the reasons why I think EMPC will not be affected by the influx of competition, and personally, I will not join any other credit institutions because EMPC is enough for me.