Ken Doleman is hoping to initiate about 50 years worth of time
travel in Mongolia. The CEO of the Swan Valley Credit Union is heading up a
team of credit union employees from across Canada to provide consulting and
mentoring services to the fledgling financial co-operative sector in Mongolia,
where he estimates the banking system is more than a half-century behind the
North American model.

Doleman will spend two weeks working with the management and
boards of individual credit unions, with the goal of helping alleviate poverty
through the gathering of savings and micro-lending, according to a report in
The Winnipeg Free Press. The more money deposited in savings accounts, the more
that can be lent to budding entrepreneurs looking to start cellphone
businesses, small restaurants, grocery stores and taxi cab companies.

“(Credit unions) there are small. They”d have four or five
employees, little use, if any, of technology, very basic ways of operating and
very limited services and products. (Canadians) would see it as a small
micro-finance kind of outlet, (a place) without any sophistication at
all,” he said. “If they”re 50 years behind us, they can leapfrog over
many of the barriers we had along our co-operative journey in Canada. They”ve
leapt over land lines and bypassed that infrastructure completely and gone to
cellphone service.”

Because the credit union system is in its relative infancy in
Mongolia, Doleman said, the upside is almost unlimited. There are fewer than
200 savings and credit co-operatives in the country of 2.7 million people, with
about 25,000 members. Swan Valley Credit Union serves a region of about 12,000
people. It has CAD200 million in assets and 9,300 members.