Historically, personal banking hasn’t been a subject with which to stir the passions of the masses. But, at a time when most of us are increasingly anxious about the tenuous security of our assets (especially in a part of the world where the chasm between breathtaking wealth and bare-knuckle survival is in full view almost everywhere), and the mere choice of where we park our savings has become a political act, Vancity is capturing a fast-growing number of people’s votes – figuratively and, in terms of this year’s Best of the City poll, literally. It was the runaway Gold winner in the Best Local Bank/Credit Union Category, and took Silver for Best Company to Work For.
Tamara Vrooman, president and CEO of Vancity, has a great deal to do with this. When she arrived at the community credit union (Canada’s largest) in 2007, it was already in more than good standing, but she has doubled its value in the ensuing decade, to $24 billion, all while overseeing the launch of many initiatives that run counter to the received wisdom of the financial industry.
“The question I asked myself, and ended up asking our staff, is, ‘In what ways can we think not only about what we do with the money we earn, but how we earn it in the first place?’” she says. “What’s been interesting over this journey has been that the bolder we are about what makes us different, the better we actually do. We’ve had record years of profitability, record years of membership growth. We’ve been growing by over 30,000 members each year for the past four years, which is larger than most credit unions, full stop.”
Vancity’s growth, to more than half a million owner-members, has happened as a result of its mission to be ethical in everything it does, from investing in myriad environmental and socially conscious initiatives, to finding fiscally responsible ways of helping young people establish credit.
“What people are observing is that inequality is inefficient by almost any measure,” says Vrooman. “People experience that personally, but I think they also see it evidenced in their community.
“Millennials are telling us what makes us cool is not our technology and all of the things many people associate with that [demographic]; it’s our values. And frankly, our older members have always known that: Doing the right thing for people, in a socially and environmentally sustainable way, is not only not anathema to a strong business. It’s essential to it.”
