On April 1, 2007, the Province of Manitoba introduced Bill 24: The Consumer Protection Amendment Act (Cost of Credit Disclosure and Miscellaneous Amendments). This bill is designed to protect consumers by ensuring that financial institutions disclose the total cost of borrowing on their personal credit products including lines of credit, overdraft protection, personal loans and mortgages.

If you are a borrowing member, this also has implications for your statements. The Act requires us to include credit details such as payment frequency, payment amount and interest rate changes.

Assiniboine Credit Union is now required to provide a statement to any member who has a credit product with us. Members who have previously chosen to discontinue their statements will now receive a paper statement if they have credit products because CU@HOME Internet banking cannot display the required information at this time. We hope our new banking platform will be able to do so when we convert in 2008. At that time, borrowing members will once again be able to suppress or discontinue their statements.

Non-borrowing members are not affected by this legislation and are able to discontinue their statements at any time and rely on CU@HOME to track their account activity.