Loomio
Sat 8 Apr 2017 8:30AM

Tech coops working in/for credit union sector

SWS Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) Public Seen by 454

Paul Treece from ABCUL, the credit unions apex, presented to Cooperatives London a couple of weeks ago. I followed up with a request to discuss poss business opportunities (Paul is a techie himself in his day job). He responed as follows:

"
I didn’t notice any credit unions in the tech coops client lists. Would you be able to put together a brief ‘newsletter’ item with a link to your web site that could be shared more widely with credit unions who might be interested – either nationally, or we could limit this to the London & SE area (about 650 contacts in our lists). That could be a starter, in case there is interest in your services. It would build awareness anyway.

My own credit union is about to replace its aging IP-PBX with a new IP telephony system (3 sites on broadband, 20 users total), and is potentially interested in IT support services (appropriate to a financial service), but neither of these were listed on the site as services that are available.

There are other potential synergies on housing coops or elsewhere, so hopefully we can find a way to take something forward together. I’m copying in Dolores Beckford, as she is the Forum Exec Chair and was originally going to present for you earlier in the year.
With regards from Paul Treece
Treasurer, Lewisham Plus Credit Union Limited"

Could we put together a list if interested coops and what they might be able to offer to this coop sector? Obvs CUs have regulated financial ecommerce platforms, but opportunities not be limited to that, sure we can offer creative and comms, etc. I'm happy to liaise if people put their pitch in this thread; and does anyone already work with a credit union?

GO

Guy Ohlenschlager Mon 10 Apr 2017 8:29AM

I don't know any co-ops that can offer the IT services, but we at The Phone Co-op partner with Ethical IT, who are part of the Ethical Property Company, so very closely aligned to the co-op sector. By the way, we offer connectivity and PBX services to a number of CUs, if it's not too late?

JMF

James Mead (Go Free Range) Mon 5 Jun 2017 3:42PM

Hi @sionwhellens. I'm sorry for the ridiculously slow and slightly tangential response...

A couple of years ago, we (Go Free Range) spent a few weeks investigating the possibility of setting up a minimal viable online-only credit union. Our idea was to start very small and grow it organically, building the software ourselves and open-sourcing it so others could follow in our footsteps.

Unfortunately we discovered that the the regulatory process was exceedingly bureaucratic and we were told it could easily take two years to get approval. We also discovered that even if we got approval, proper access to the UK banking system at a small scale is very expensive. Fees for "agency banking" (which you need if you want each customer to have their own individually addressable account number) are prohibitively high unless you have a large number of transactions.

Given that we were so small, we didn't feel as if we could afford to invest the necessary time or money to make it happen, and so we decided to call a halt to the project, although we did write up a lot of what we'd found out.

I'm still really interested in the idea and it might be more feasible in the context of CoTech, perhaps in collaboration with one or more existing credit unions, and perhaps even one of the new challenger banks, e.g. Monzo.

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of saying that we'd certainly be interested in meeting up with people involved in credit unions for a chat to see whether we could be of help.