Mortgage Business
Bank completes merger with credit union By Annie Kane 04 May 2021
A mutual bank has welcomed 3,000 new members after completing its merger with a credit co-operative.
Firefighters Mutual Bank, a division of Teachers Mutual Bank Ltd, has welcomed the new members after finalising the data transfer to formalise its merger with Firefighters Credit Co-operative Ltd.
All of the former Firefighters Credit Co-operative members are therefore now part of Firefighters Mutual Bank and have access to its range of products and services.
This includes a wider range than was available under the co-operative, including the ability to apply for fixed rate loans and credit cards, access to a mobile banking app, free and unlimited ATM withdrawals, and access to its new payments platform (NPP).
Michael Lawrence, COBA CEO and World Council Board Treasurer
Ready or not, credit unions down under are already preparing for the cost, compliance and cybersecurity issues that open banking poses, due to an aggressive approach from Australia’s federal government.
Michael Lawrence, CEO of the Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA), showed a global credit union audience just how far ahead Australia is on open banking especially when compared to other countries during a recent World Council webinar on the subject.
“In November 2017, the Australian Government announced the Consumer Data Right (CDR) here in Australia, giving consumers more access to and control over their data which traditionally had always sat inside banking institutions, and had really been at the discretion of the banking institution as opposed to being at the control of the individual customer,” said Lawrence, who also serves as Treasurer of World Council’s Board of Directors.
Mortgage Business
Mutuals continue to see strong growth By Sarah Buckley 09 February 2021
Customer-owned banks have continued to record high levels of mortgage growth, with the sector’s average increase in loan growth outpacing that of ADIs as a whole.
According to analysis of APRA data by the Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA), the member-owned bank saw a surge in home loan growth in the September quarter 2020.
COBA has outlined that while the authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) saw mortgage growth rise by 0.57 per cent in the September quarter (on value terms), the increase was much higher when looking at customer-owned banks in isolation.
Mortgage Business 03 February 2021
The customer-owned bank has announced that it is to start trading under a new name and call itself a bank by the end of the year.
Credit Union Australia (CUA) has announced that it will begin trading under a new name, Great Southern Bank, as it moves to cater to a younger audience.
CUA’s CEO, Paul Lewis, said the bank had conducted research which showed that it needed to change its name from a ‘credit union’ to a ‘bank’ due to younger adults not having a strong understanding of what a credit union was or how it operates.