Dnister Ukrainian Credit Co-operative Ltd is proud to be part of your local community and in these challenging times, community is what’s most important. It’s at the heart of what we do and we’ve being doing it for over 60 years.

Our priorities continue to be keeping members and staff safe and informed, and ensuring that banking with Dnister remains secure, safe and accessible. We want to ensure that you can continue to bank with Dnister with confidence. We have implemented a comprehensive Pandemic Response Plan to manage the impact on our business and are in regular consultation with regulators and industry bodies. We have delivered, and will continue to deliver, solutions and support to our members, including the following:

Hardship arrangements:

Dnister is providing a specific hardship arrangement to assist members experiencing a temporary inability to meet their obligations under a credit contract due to loss of income or change in circumstances as a result of COVID-19. Those arrangements will generally be provided for a term of three months up to a maximum of six months. The following hardship options will be available to qualifying members, including small business applicants:

(a) No repayments during the hardship term;
(b) Interest only repayment during the hardship term; or
(c) Partial principal and interest repayments during the hardship term.

We are also waiving our fees for the restructuring or consolidation of loans.

Interest rates:

Dnister is making changes to our interest rates in response to the Reserve Bank and market movements. In doing so, we have endeavoured to balance the different needs of members with loans and members with deposits.

Our interest rate changes are as follows:

  • We have reduced our loan interest rates by 0.20% pa for new and existing loans effective from 14 April 2020.
  • We have changed our term deposit interest rates by varying degrees effective from 6 April 2020, with our headline Term Deposit rate remaining at 1.80% pa for a 6 months term for lodgements of $150,000 or more.
  • We have reduced a number of our savings and transactional accounts’ interest rates by varying degrees effective from 18 May 2020.

In addition, Dnister’s Benefit Contribution payable to nominated eligible community organisation’s Community Access Accounts will be reduced by 0.25% effective from 18 May 2020.

Fees and charges:

Dnister made changes to a range of transaction fees and loyalty fee rebates late last year and these became effective from 1 March 2020.  Unfortunately, those changes have had a far greater impact on our members than we had been anticipated, exacerbated by the increased volume of card transactions due to COVID-19 as fewer merchants accept cash. We apologise for the impact this has had on members during this difficult time.

Dnister will therefore be reversing all transaction fees charged to members in March. In addition, we are reviewing our transaction fees and loyalty fee rebate arrangements with a view to making them more appropriate for the current circumstances.

Extended Call Centre hours:

If you need assistance with your banking or are facing financial hardship, please contact a member of our team. We have extended our Call Centre hours to 7:00pm AEDST on weekdays, so you can now ring our Member Services team from 9.00am till 7.00pm AEDST and on Saturdays from 9.00am till 12.00pm AEDST by calling 1800 353 041.

In the coming days, our Chair, David Hassett, will be writing to you with a message of support from the Board.

On behalf of our team, I want to personally thank each of you for banking with Dnister, and extend my gratitude to our staff for their outstanding commitment during this challenging time. Please stay safe with your families and be assured that we a just a phone call away.

 

Strength in unity!

Kind Regards,

 

 

 

Liam Tiernan
Chief Executive Officer