Customers are being urged to consider the safety of their financial savings.

In light of recent instability in the banking world, the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) has announced that its Savings Protection Scheme (SPS) currently stands at more than €110 million – and that no member of an ILCU credit union has ever lost any of their savings.

A credit union is a cooperative financial organisation that is managed and owned by its customers. Kieron Brennan, ILCU’s CEO, commented on the advantage of such unions: “In the unlikely event that a credit union became insolvent or defaulted financially so as to become unable to repay savings to members, the SPS has the discretionary power to compensate each credit union member up to a maximum of €12,700.

“The average credit union member saving/deposit account is €4,620. No claim has ever been made by credit union members for compensation under the ILCU’s Savings Protection Scheme.”

Those UK customers with savings at banks that adhere to the statutory Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) are also protected – by up to £35,000 per financial institution.

According to July’s Financial Stability and Depositer Protection paper by HM Treasury, this amount is set to be reviewed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Autumn, when it will consider the option of increasing the amount of protected savings per customer to up to £50,000.

Securing savings is becoming increasingly important to many people following the decline of Lehman Brothers bank and the nationalisation of Northern Rock. In 2007, customers of the Christmas catalogue Farepak lost their savings because the company was not part of the FSCS.