Teachers’ society gets banking business licence

Islands

TEACHERS Savings and Loan Society Limited (Tisa) is one of the first out of 21 societies in the country to be transformed into a financial institution, following the presentation of its banking business licence.
Bank of Papua New Guinea Governor and registrar of savings and loan societies Loi Bakani presented the licence to Tisa board chairman Gabriel Tai in Kokopo, East New Britain on Friday.
“It is a challenge now that you are one of the first societies to transform into a financial institution, to be called Tisa Community Finance Limited, which is much bigger with new products to be offered,” Bakani said when presenting the licence.
“We hope that in future, the other societies may follow suit as it will give a good foundation for our financial institutions to look forward to that type of change in the future.”
Bakani said it has been a long journey for Tisa requiring a lot of courage and direction from the directors and staff to fine-tune ideas to get it to where it is today.
He said the licence would provide service members what they wanted for so many years but were not able to get it due to the limitations of current savings and loan societies.
Bakani said the Central Bank was open-minded to have this flexibility built into societies and even finance companies to advance to another stage.
“We cannot be stagnant all the time because the world is changing and technology is changing and we have to adapt to these changes, therefore, our structures need to remain relevant to changes,” Bakani said.
Tai thanked Bakani for issuing the banking licence on behalf of teachers, board, management and staff and most importantly the 50,000 members of the society who are not only teachers but employees of other State entities as well.
“This is a good news for the members of the society.”