Composition of supervisory committees in Trinidad and Tobago credit unions
This paper provides an assessment of the competence and independence of members of the supervisory committee (SC) of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) Credit Unions (CUs), and examines factors that are associated with SC chairpersons’ competence and independence. Most of the information used in the paper was collected by conducting structured interviews with the immediate-past chairperson of the supervisory committees of 58 T&T CUs. The results of the analysis indicate that the overall level of financial literacy, financial expertise and independence among SC chairpersons was relatively low. The SC chairpersons of community-based CUs tended to be significantly more financially literate than their counterparts in organizationally-based CUs. Also, the results suggest that the independence of SC chairpersons varied negatively with CU Size.