Our Mission
"To add value to members' share capital and funds. Ensure accessibility to personal loans. Other credit facilities and further enhance our members socio economic well-being through integrated cooperative enterprises that are viable, secure and member-centric".
Our Vision
"To be a premier Thrift & Credit Co-operative Society in Malaysia. Maintaining high Integrity & best performance record in our financial services and consumer products to its members"..
Intergrity | Honesty | DIscipline | Fairness | Timeliness | Respect
Our Core Values
"We are who we are, and do what we do, on the heels of the cooperative principal values that we have imbided since inception. We uphold the under-Listed core values very dearly in all our dealings. These shared values represent the cords that bind us together as a co-operative entity. "
HISTORY OF
KOPERASI GEMILANG MALAYSIA BERHAD
Koperasi Gemilang Malaysia Berhad, formerly known as the Socfin Employees Thrift & Loan Society Ltd, was incorporated in June 1935 by a group of senior staff members headed by Mr. A.R. Fernandez with the support of the Socfin management that saw a need to set up a collective association as an in-house cooperative society for the benefit of their fellow staff.
The main aim of this society was to encourage members to engage in a saving scheme and in times of need they could turn to the cooperative to borrow at a lower interest rate compared to the financial institutions and also to discourage the members from falling into the clutches of the chettiars (money lenders) which was rampant during that time.
At the early stages of inception, the membership stood at 67 but it slowly progressed and developed without much hitches with a base of over 200 members just before the outbreak of WWII in 1939. During this period, the cooperative suspended its activities and the society’s records and company documents were taken to Singapore for safe keeping but it was lost with the fall of Singapore. Just before the records were taken away the then treasurer Mr. I.C. Cherian made a copy of the member’s balances and these transcripts made by Mr. Cherian proved useful to reconstruct members accounts which was approved by the Cooperative Department in the absence of the records which had been lost during the war. In spite of all the odds, the society was revived by way of an EGM held on 9th February 1946.
Under the leadership of Mr. Cherian, the society once again started to progress in terms of membership as growth in capital. The society after 1958 opened its doors to other categories of workers in Socfin and when the artisan group came into its fold through a membership drive the membership base continued to grow steadily. In 1982, the society restructured when its registration was approved to convert from a Thrift Loan into a Multipurpose society.
In 1985, the Society celebrated its 50th Golden Jubilee on the 26th October. Professor Tunku A. Aziz as the president of Angkasa in his speech praised the Cooperative on its progress from been merely an in-house cooperative pre-WWII that is still active and has contributed tremendously to members and society at large. The Society was ranked 80th out of 2356 registered societies in 1985. At this juncture, the society’s membership had crossed the 3000 mark which was a major achievement from a humble in-house society beginning to have come full circle into a fully-fledged multipurpose cooperative society.
However, in 2004 there was a turn of events in the society’s growth as a result of the closure of all business activities by Socfin in Malaysia resulting in massive retrenchment of Malaysian Socfin employees. As a result of this event, the society’s membership declined rapidly as the members could no longer contribute to the society and also many withdrew their savings to tide over their financial difficulties. During these trying times the management committee kept the society afloat with minor activities using funds derived from prior investment.
As part of its rejuvenation efforts, the committee also took a stance to change its name and formerly registered it on the 14th December 2007 as Koperasi Gemilang Malaysia Berhad (Koperasi Gemilang) to enable it to open its membership to all Malaysians. As part of this revival exercise, the committee also started to explore the prospect of bringing in experienced co-operators and corporate figures to join as members during the period of 2012. The existing 131 members resigned with the exception of the Secretary. At the AGM on 18th November 2012, a new management board made of 6 members was formed and the new team has pledged to bring back the Society back to its glorious days. In line with this pledge, the new team has targeted to recruit 500 new members and to have a MEMBERS paid up fund of RM1 MILLION and also to generate revenue to write off the accumulated losses of RM 189,000 by year end 2013. The focus of the new team’s activities will be not only personal loans to members but also to venture into other viable activities as per the by-laws of the society.