Citysave – looking forwards – working in partnership at the heart of our city
In the past few years, Citysave has demonstrated that a modern community based credit union can be sustainable and meet the different financial requirements of a wider membership.
In doing so, we have become more commercially resilient, achieving more with less cost and returning dividends to members.
We are now focused on expanding our work and our services, and in planning this it has become clear that our greatest strengths lie in the relationships with our members and our partners.
Members – our greatest asset is our active membership who are so much more than customers to us. Most of our new members come through advocacy, and we continue to rely on our members to talk about us and recommend us.
This year we have launched the Membership Rewards programme and we now provide points for members who get us into their work place, recommend new members and help us to grow our business. These points get converted into shopping vouchers in time for Christmas, as a real thank you to members who actively work on our behalf.
We have developed a Members Reps area on the web site, which we want to be an interactive resource to help more of our members talk about us and share best practice. We also want the forum on there to be the voice of our members, guiding our work and feeding in to the team here what more we should be doing or what we can improve.
Our members are the life blood of Citysave and make the difference in all we do.
Partnering in our City – we now partner with organisations in different sectors, some of which are new to us this year. Particularly exciting is our work with two of the leading unions, who, along with BHSF Group, have helped us bridge the gap to reach into more workplaces across Birmingham. As a result we are delighted to be welcoming members employed by companies such as Jaguar and Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Trust.
Our work continues to grow in partnership with intervention and social landlord sectors, where we have Trusted Partners established. With a very small resource, maintaining a sustainable service, demands us to work in partnership effectively. We have built an outreach capacity and aim to provide a valuable and supportive service to both existing and new partners, who then can offer our services to their clients and tenants in turn.
We also remain committed to working collaboratively and in partnership with other credit unions to enable the sector to expand and operate efficiently and more effectively. In doing so, we have established a company limited by guarantee, Credit Union Really Effective Solutions (CURES) enabling us to ring fence specific projects that we can run collegiately with other credit unions and expand both our services and our products.
At all times the first duty of Citysave is to its members and its common bond of those living or working in Birmingham. However, to develop and expand our work it is appropriate to do so in partnership with other leading credit unions.