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A new Representative Assembly was elected to a total of 62 OP-Pohjola Group cooperative banks. Between 4 and 17 November, the election of the Representative Assemblies was held simultaneously for the first time. The number of owner-members as electors totalled over 900,000, i.e. around two-thirds of all OP-Pohjola Group cooperative banks` owner-members.

- What was new in the election, in addition to being held simultaneously, was that it was possible to vote online on the internet besides postal voting. People were active in voting online: 22.2 per cent of the votes were cast via op.fi, says Stina Suominen, Senior Vice President, OP-Pohjola.

The number of candidates totalled 5,284 of whom a total of 1,960 were elected to the Representative Assemblies. The lifetime of the Representative Assembly is four years.

- The election ran smoothly. According to the information we have received from our cooperative banks, as many women as men were for the first time elected to the Assemblies. Likewise, the proportion of young people elected rose to correspond to their proportion of our customers. We believe that the option to vote online and the visibility of the election in social media contributed to this, explains Suominen.

- An OP-Pohjola cooperative bank is a cooperative owned by its customers, whose basic value is the principle of one member and one vote. The cooperative basis of a Group cooperative bank is manifested in the election of its Representative Assembly in which its owner-members elect from among members a Representative Assembly to made decisions related to their own bank, points out Suominen.

The Representative Assembly is the supreme decision-making body. A general Representative Assembly meeting makes decisions, for example, on discharging the board of directors and the managing director from liability for the previous financial year. The meeting also elects members to the Supervisory Board and an auditor.

An annual Cooperative Meeting is the supreme decision-making body of OP-Pohjola Group cooperative banks which have no elected Representative Assembly.

Unlike other OP-Pohjola Group cooperative banks, the results of the election of the Representative Assembly of one cooperative bank (Länsi-Uudenmaan OsuuspankkI) will not be announced until February-March. A new election will be held because some of the bank`s owner-members had received voting materials covering an incorrect region.

In the election, voters also contributed to the construction project of the new children`s hospital. Given that the voter turnout of the 62 cooperative banks averaged 34 per cent, OP-Pohjola will make an extra contribution of 20,000 euros to the project.

OP-Pohjola Group is one of the founding donors of the New Children`s Hospital 2017 project. In October, the Group made a one-million-euro contribution to the project.

For more information, please contact:
Stina Suominen, Senior Vice President, tel. +358 (0)50 3090 150