The Registrar of Friendly Societies, Mr Noel Sisk, has taken us to task for suggesting in a recent article about the credit unions that since some unions pay higher annual dividends (or interest) on savings than others, that you might want to shop around for one which pays the highest dividend return.

Family Money is aware of people being less than honest about their address when joining a credit union - they use a relative's address, for example - in order to join what they believe is a "better" credit union, with more generous lending rules and higher paying dividends.

But Mr Sisk is quite correct when he writes: "A person can only join a particular credit union if that person comes within the specific Common Bond of that credit union. . . a fundamental hallmark of credit unions. . . which makes them distinctive from other financial organisations.

"A relatively limited number of people may be eligible to join two credit unions, normally employee-based and community-based. So the concept of `shopping around' is a misnomer and gives a very false impression."