Credit risk management of lithuanian credit unions

Lending is one of the main credit union activities, and the most important risks which they face to is credit risk, it is necessary to analyze it in detail and have a sound mechanism of these asset management. As well as the management, this risk is necessary to consider the social aspect of the credit union. The work item - credit risk management. The aim - to examine the operational and credit risk management features of credit union as a specific financial institutions. The first part of the study looked at the credit union theoretical credit risk management features: characterized by cooperative financial institutions lending and credit risk perception of the concept of inherent credit unions. It also reviews the credit risk assessment principles and provides credit risk management techniques and performance characteristics. Secound segment of the paper characterizes situation in Lithuanian credit unions sector and describes researches based on credit risk management in credit unions practice. There also is given research method of credit risk management in Lithuanian credit unions. The work led to the following main conclusions. Credit union is a lending institution which distinguished higher degree of confidence and a wider access to financial services. Profitability is not as much emphasis to be exposed to liberal lending policies, fulfilling the mission and goals. Credit risk assessment before issuing a loan is the most important step in credit risk management process, and therefore takes into account the person credited implementation capacity, ownership structure, stability, reliability, and others, as well as the repayment of the loan and collateral. For further credit assessment it is recomended to analyze loan risk groups (doubtful assets), which allows to react timely with the situation and take necessary decisions. Credit risk management of credit unions is analysed in two aspects: internal management system, ensuring the proper functioning of the credit policy, rules, principles, and secound aspect - loan portfolio quality evaluation and supervision of credit institutions which set limits and standards of performance analysis, based on the basis of credit risk management requirements. Analyzing the features of the credit union loan provides that the credit risk depends on: the deposit level of use of credit capital formation, asset composition, loan under the terms of the structure, distribution of loans by homogeneous groups and the degree of credit risk concentration. The level of the credit risk in credit unions depends on the credit union crediting policy (composition of the credit portfolio, volume of operating income). Credit unions issue a lot of relatively small loans that interdependece is high, so management of concentration risk is specific and requires efficient distribution of loans. Growth of the credit unions sector, and hence volume of lending makes credit risk management in Lithuanian credit unions increasingly urgent. Credit quality deterioration and the growing level of credit risk is affected by economic and legislative situation of the country. Such situation also depends on the prudence of the allocation of loans. Therefore, dealing with problems of the credit risk, decision maker should rely not only on traditional credit risk management models, bul also integrate other areas of science and rely on new methodologies. Fuzzy goal programming can be used efficiently and effectively to develop more flexsible and realistic models for providing solutions for credit unions‘ portfolio management problems. These models can be integrated to the existing risk analysis and managenet models available for credit unions rebalansing of investment portfolio based on economic conditions, demand of products and risk factors. The work consists of 69 pages, 14 tables and 18 figures