
Sharing Our Earnings - The Cooperative Difference
When Heritage Land Bank does well financially, you benefit. That’s the basic philosophy behind the cooperative dividend (also called "patronage" by some Farm Credit lenders) and also a basic financial reason for doing business with a Farm Credit lending cooperative. Every borrower is a stockholder of the cooperative and receives part of the earnings. The more you borrow, the bigger your share of the earnings.
Heritage Land Bank’s commitment to sharing our earnings with you comes from our cooperative structure. No other type of lender offers you such an advantage.
Each year the board of directors decides how much of our earnings are available to be returned as a cooperative dividend to stockholders.
The most important benefit of our cooperative dividend is that it lowers your effective interest rate. You not only receive a competitive interest rate on your loan, but you also receive a cooperative dividend each year when Heritage Land Bank does well financially.
Cooperative Dividend Example
The following example shows the percent and amount of a Cooperative Dividend paid to a typical customer with an outstanding loan balance of $100,000.
Year | Percent Returned |
Cooperative |
2008 | 0.84% | $840 |
2009 | 0.56% | $560 |
2010 | 0.78% | $780 |
*2011 | 0.00% | - |
2012 | 0.50% | $495 |
2013 | 0.65% | $650 |
2014 | 0.65% | $650 |
2015 | 0.65% | $650 |
2016 | 0.65% | $650 |
2017 | 0.65% | $650 |
2018 | 0.70% | $700 |
2019 | 0.70% | $700 |
AVERAGE | 0.64% | $666 |
* In 2010, the Board of Directors made the decision to not pay a cooperative dividend due to net losses.