Asociation CAR West Region plays an important role at the regional level, in the western part of Romania. Provides organizational, managerial, financial, and technical support to all affiliated entities. Currently these include 24 Credit Unions, totalizing a number of over 100.000 members (clients). Within the last 20 years of ongoing activity, Asociation CAR West Region focused on developing its social components by contributing directly to the education of its members in the spirit of savings and strong financial management.

Goals and future projects:

• Continuous development of the affiliated Credit Unions by attracting new members within the financially excluded areas and creation of new lending products to support them.
• Lobby for improving the Romanian microfinancing legal framework, in order to expand financial assistance for low income households;
• Lobby for promoting Credit Unions as efficient tools for distributing the finance from European funds.

In the last decade, the Credit Unions reuniting members from the western side of the country flourished into a strong and widely recognized financial opportunity for the personal needs of its members, encouraging the saving in the form of deposits to the social funds.

Attaining such a degree of performance is a direct and exclusive result of the impulse for professionalism and modernization imprinted by the Territorial Credit Union Association, a performance that has generated a mass transformation for all the Credit Unions into strong Non-Banking Financial Iinstitutions. Several of the managerial actions adopted by consensus, that generated financial and social performance, are worth mentioning:

1. An uninterrupted process of comprehensive computerization of the daily activity. Today the Credit Unions affiliated to the Territorial Union possess several hundred computers, connected by an in-house network system, auxiliary office automation particular to NFI's activity. The IT specialists of the Territorial Union designed and continuously maintain the integrated informatic system which offers support for accountancy, treasury management, surveillance of delinquency, records of members and endorsers from the entire association.

2. Finalizing the externalization process of the Credit Unions from the companies and institutions they originated from, and the creation of a strong image, a brand name for each, marked the foundation for the strong Credit Unions of today, despite the economic downturn of many companies during the crisis years.

3. Boosting permanent improvement of the employees of Credit Unions due to the fact that they maintain a continuous relation with the members.

4. Modernizing the offices of the Credit Unions, transforming them into friendly and attractive spaces distinguished by modernity, functionality and security.

5.Focusing on the professional training of the employees made possible the fact that approximately 2/3 of them graduated an economic or law university, and many are also postgraduates of Romanian Banking Institute, with a European Banking certificate.

6, The professionally organizet training program of the Territorial Union has the purpose of keeping awake employee’s desire to be in touch with all that is new in their field of action.

7, The activity extended to rural areas through the creation of many agencies which operate in their own offices, connected through the Internet to the headquarters and the main databases, with full time employees. An increasing percentage of our members is coming from these agencies(now more than 25%), offering them funding to support their farming and trade activities.

All of these define the Credit Unions as genuine credit institutions, entities deeply involved in the life of the community, acting in unity, using credit regulations implemented to the recommendation of the Territorial Union, a strong association of professional nature.

The Territorial Union is permanently concerned with the growth of people’s trust in the services offered by the Credit Unions. Maintaining them on an upward trend with balance sheet results exceeding expectations meant for the Territorial Union a national 1stplace for many years in the row. This success creates a sense of safety and soundness, it keeps the balance between the interests of the group and the one of the society, between the economic and the social side. It is also the obvious intention of the Territorial Union and the Credit Unions to expand the services and the humanitarian benefits to supplement their scope of activity in this regard.

Not by chance the Credit Unions have introduced and approved new forms of mutual aid, setting up new regulations to help the members with seniority, thus in addition to the bereavement benefits given in the last years for both the member and his/her family members, we have now introduced scholarships for the children of those members with seniority but with limited financial possibilities, free financial and legal advice and a broad range of promotional loans.