Having been at the Unite Sector Conferences in Brighton this week I took time from the very busy schedule by visiting the stand promoting Unite’s new credit union deal. I signed up on line – and low and behold – my email was acknowledged and then another followed telling me which credit union I could join – Transave UK – and that they will get me sorted in next 48 hours. Hows that for service?
The following article is from The Guardian and you can click on the graphic to visit the webs pages for Unite credit union stuff.
“They have received vocal support from the likes of Ed Miliband and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and now credit unions have received a major boost from Britain’s biggest trade union. Unite has launched a credit union service in a bid to take on “rip-off” payday lenders and give its members access to affordable finance and savings products.
Unite is not going into the credit union business itself; it has, instead, created a panel of “carefully vetted” existing ones and is making it easy for its members to link up with one that is already established in their region.
The move comes two months after trade union Unison announced it was launching a nationwide network of credit unions to help impoverished members deal with personal debt and financial difficulties. To date, around 50 credit unions have been signed up.
Credit unions are co-operatives owned and controlled by their members that distribute their profits in the form of dividends, which means the money stays in the community rather than going to shareholders.
Unite said its service was open to all its members in England, Scotland and Wales, and added that when compared with the typical rates from payday lenders, someone borrowing £1,000 over a year could save around £685.
So far, there are more than a dozen credit unions on the Unite panel, including London Plus, Leeds City and East Sussex.
Len McCluskey, Unite’s general secretary, said the new credit union service would ensure the union’s members “can access finance without fear, and help keep them out of the clutches of parasitic lenders.”
Unite, which has 1.4 million members, added that independent research showed that the disposable income of a typical member had fallen by £129 a month”.
