The credit union of forest workers appeared in 1975 to cover the credit needs of the workers of the forest industry in Hunedoara county. Among the founders we mention Mărginean Şofron, Sîrbu Oniţa, Ganea Ion, Hozan Ioan, Talpaş Mircea. In a short while the credit union grew beyond the limits of the Forest Deparment of Hunedoara County, attracting employees of AJVPS Hunedoara and ICAS Simeria too.

The need of continuous access to the financial services determined an ongoing growth of members along time – 10 years ago the institution had already a number of over 650 members. Currently, due the large restructuration plans of Hunedoara Forestry and of other two institutions, memberships decreased to 500. A strong characteristic of this Credit Union is the territorial spread of its members, many of them living in different areas of the Hunedoara County like Valea Jiului (11 Forest districts) or Brad-Baia de Cris area.

On each Forest District, the Credit Union benefits from the responsible work of volunteers who collect the loan rates, the interest and the monthly contributions from our members. In the last years this Credit Union abandoned its status of „closed Credit Union”, as some people used to call it because only members working in the forestry industry were accepted and now it accepts members from other fields. However, extraneous membership applications are still low because the headquarters of C.A.R. Romsilva I.F.N. is hosted inside Hunedoara Forestry headquarters building, so less accessible to external applications.

Soon we've come to realize that only as a united entity we will be able to exist in the market thus the member’s conference decided it is best to adhere to U.T.C.A.R. West Region(Territorial Credit Union Association first created in Hunedoara county) an Association that supports us and ensures the legislative framework in which we operate surveillance and specialized control.

The board of directors has always been engrossed of ensuring the necessary computing equipment, C.A.R. Romsilva I.F.N. was among the first institutions which used computer software for keeping member records. Presently when no workplace is safe or certain the loan delinquency has become a fact. This is the main reason why we have adopted the decision of implementing U.T.C.A.R.’s main applications such as management and risk management software.

The lack of territorial cohesion of members has determined the practice of one type of loan, the „traditional loan”. The size of each loan is in close connection with the size of the member's social fund – no higher than 3x member’s social fund, repayable in no more than 36 monthly payments.

For the upcoming period, the main target of the board of directors is represented by the diversification of the type of loans, mainly because the requests for short-term loans increased. However, due to the fact that loan endorsers are hard to find, we strongly encourage our members to access capitalization loans for increasing their social funds and thus being able to borrow more with few or no endorsers.

The financial results of the past few years, although the economic crisis affected us all, were better than expected. Thereby, we achieved an income that surpassed with about 36% the budgetary provisions, total expenditures were below the budgetary provisions, respectively at 97%. All the mentioned data led to a considerable surplus which was assigned in proportion of 95% to members as interest, proportional with the size of each member’s social fund. The interest rate assigned to member’s social funds was higher than the inflation rate and also among the highest on the financial market. In addition under law regulations this kind of interest is tax free. Thus we co-interest our members to grow solid social funds that we strive administer as a good manager.

Equity also increased, yet their balance is reduced because it increases in value while we are more concerned about the protection of the social funds and the amount of the annual interest rate, and we are also striving to reach 200.000 Euro level equity. Credit Union’s productive assets recorded an upward trend yearly, it increased by 10% compared to the end of the previous year.

We are aware that we have many things to do in order to develop the Credit Union and first of all we must attract all Hunedoara Forestery employees but not only. Our doors are open to any employee and the Board will continue to implement management measures to increase the attractiveness of the services we offer.