Australian Mutuals Archives

16/09/2026

Teachers’ Pep: How Queensland Teachers Credit Union is Motivating Young Australians to Succeed is a 7-minute video produced in the 2000s by QTCU. The video promotes the credit union’s Keyway program which gave Queensland high school students financial tips and the motivation to achieve in all facets of their lives.

The stars of the show are ex-pro basketballer Eric Bailey and Liz Vella from QTCU’s Lifestyle and Financial Coaching Programs. Eric and Liz are shown working with students at Pine Rivers High School and Brigidine College.

Queensland Teachers Credit Union was registered in 1965. In 2011 it became QT Mutual Bank and in 2016 it merged with RACQ

10/09/2026

Bring the kids, the nanas, the grandpas and the dogs.

We're turning 60... and we're sharing the celebration with you. Explore our special 60th birthday celebrations, including community events with free ice cream, giveaways and exclusive offers.

There's never been a better time to discover the Credit Union difference.

Visit our special 60-Year webpage to join in on all the fun!

https://www.sccu.com.au/60-years-of-sccu/

10/09/2026

🎉 Throwback Thursday | 60 Years of Coastline | 2000

A milestone year.

In 2000, Coastline Credit Union reached $100 million in assets and launched Online Banking, making it easier than ever for customers to bank when and where it suited them.

Innovation has always been about making banking better for our customers.

📸 Our first website

10/09/2026

As mutuals matured and began to offer more sophisticated products, retirement and investment services were something that they looked to provide for members. With that in mind here is a promotional video from the mid-1980s for NSW Teachers Credit Union’s (Teachers Mutual Bank) innovative Edvest Retirement Service.

The four and half minute recently digitised video explains the features of the new Edvest Retirement Service for “new and existing members 55 and over”. These features include investment advice, legal advice and estate planning and new investment accounts and products.

Edvest was released in 1984 as a cooperative endeavour between NSW Teachers Credit Union, today’s Credit Union SA and the Australian Federation of Credit Unions Ltd (AFCUL). Later Queensland Teachers Credit Union and today’s Bank Australia joined in.

Teachers Mutual Bank members over 50 years of age can still enjoy the benefits of Edvest today.

26/08/2026

Not long ago we were privileged to sit down with Jacki Johnson, long-time director at Community First Bank, and record an oral history interview with her.

Jacki’s career has revolved around community service. Beginning as an occupational therapist, her work has included appointments as Non-Executive Director NSW Workcover Authority and CEO of the Insurance Australia Group NZ (IAG NZ) along with her directorship of Community First Bank which began in 2007.

The interview covered Jacki’s early career, insurance, her introduction to Community First Bank, Community First’s evolution from credit union to mutual bank, the fight with Bendigo Bank over the use of “Community” and much else besides.

Here is Jacki’s response to our question of whether the customer owned banking sector can grow:

"I think it can grow … The more I talk across our sector on the dwindling number at AGMs [annual general meetings], some people think, well, that's a great result because we can get through our AGMs faster. That actually signals to me that people aren't feeling part of the governance, which actually would be our differentiator.

"So, I believe we should grow. I was really surprised out of the Royal Commission findings that we didn't see more of a shift from banks to the mutuals that came through pretty well out of the Royal Commission into financial services. It shows the apathy of customers that if it's too hard for them to leave where they are, then we have to make it appealing enough as a proposition, not just in price or product, but a feeling of why it would be better to belong. And I think that's the challenge for us as a sector. How do we do that collectively and individually to make people feel they belong to be special?"

Read the whole interview transcript here. https://ausmutualsarchives.com.au/stories/jacki-johnson/

26/08/2026

18/08/2026

With the assistance of Customer Owned Banking, and , we have produced two new booklets. One outlines how the Australian mutuals sector has led the way in new technology and service provision. Examples include Australia’s first 24-hour ATM, Australia’s first VISA debit cards and telephone banking. Download a digital flipbook here https://drive.google.com/file/d/11iQvjRWKaj709tx8zbR6nyAJCGCz-5Po/view?usp=sharing

The other is titled “The women who helped shape the Australian mutual movement” and demonstrates how Australian mutuals have historically been progressive in terms of lending to women and in employment, including electing women to boards.
The booklet includes short case studies of Rose Gallagher, Helen McIntyre and Barbara Wellington, all are women who occupied senior positions in credit unions as early as 1960. Download a digital flipbook here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qk-vDdN0vqCCyYfq1iKsOLRi2Naj_FqC/view?usp=sharing

We have a stock of the booklets printed, some of which we handed out at WCUC26 in Sydney last month. If you or your mutual would like some hard copies drop us a line here https://ausmutualsarchives.com.au/contact-us/

12/08/2026

As The Capricornian became The Capricornian Bank late last year, now seems a good time to check out one of their TV ads from 2006. In those days they were known as Capricornian Credit Union.

Below is our package of four TV commercials featuring the adventures of Deb and Dave for Capricornia Credit Union’s “a different kind of banking” promotion. The promotion was submitted to Cuscal for an award.

The Credit Union of Capricornia was formed in 1981 through the amalgamation of North Rockhampton Credit Union and Park Avenue Community Credit Union. North Rockhampton Credit Union was formed in 1963 as North Rockhampton Parish Credit Co-operative Society and Park Avenue Community Credit Union was registered in 1959 as Park Avenue Parish Credit Co-operative Society.

The Credit Union of Capricornia became Capricornia Credit Union in 1983 and in 1985 they merged with Rockhampton Credit Union. In 2009 they changed their name to The Capricornian and finally in November 2025 they became The Capricornian Bank.

Four TV commercials featuring the adventures of Deb and Dave for Ca...

05/08/2026

Alan Parry was a learned idealist and the first board chair of Education Credit Union Co-operative when it was registered in 1973. Education Credit Union Co-operative merged with Members Australia Credit Union in 2003 forming mecu which became known as Bank Australia in 2015.

Alan’s ideals and details of his life and career were shared with us via the oral history interview he recorded with Richard Raxworthy in 1995. Alan learned about credit unions while working as a teacher in Canada where most of his colleagues were members of British Columbia Teachers' Federation Credit Union.

On his return to teaching in Victoria, he and others in the Victorian Teachers' Union helped form Education Credit Union Co-operative. In an earlier interview from 1985, Alan relates a tale that inspired his commitment to credit unions:

“As a young teacher I will never forget the treatment dished out by a bank manager who reacted to my need for 100 pounds to get together enough to buy the Holden of the day, as if the survival of the bank depended on his decision. The same fellow later confessed that he did all his personal borrowing from his credit union. This confession was made after he’d kept me waiting outside his office while he finished the morning paper.

“It was this incident, more than any other, that triggered nascent memories of the early 19th century British trading co-operatives – memories that resurfaced from past and distant exposure to economic history at Melbourne University.

“My recall was of an alternative model based on member ownership and self-help – of a model that rejected political stereotyping but that nevertheless had a social mission. And these qualities of co-operation stay with me today as the justification of our industry”.
Alan told Raxworthy great stories about early Education Credit Union Co-operative loans:

“I can remember that two of our very early loans involved a fellow who wished to borrow the bail money to bail his brother out on the grounds that he was quite sure he was innocent. He was equally convinced that if his brother went to court from a position of being on bail he would be in a better position to defend the charge.

“Another was with a teacher who had run out of sick leave and was absolutely without income. He lived in an old school house that he was renting and he had tried to get a loan from a bank, unsuccessfully, just to tide him over until he resumed work. One day he had the very terrible unfortunate experience of cleaning parts of the carburettor of his car in the bathroom of his house and his daughter in the kitchen turned on one of those instantaneous gas heaters for a hot water service. Turn on the water and the water activates the pilot light that lights the flame. The heater was in the bathroom and the whole bathroom went up. He was burned over about 30 per cent of his body.

“We were able to provide that loan very quickly. It was an experience that I have always remembered as perhaps one of the worthiest ways in which you could ever embark as a new credit union on any sort of lending programme.”

29/07/2026

Over 2500 delegates from around the world are still glowing from the wisdom and good cheer that brewed at the World Council of Credit Unions/ Owned Banking Conference in Sydney last week.

Today, the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) oversees a mutual finance movement of over 400 million members in more than 100 countries. WOCCU’s mission is to “promote more equitable and resilient communities through financial inclusion powered by credit unions and financial cooperatives”.

WOCCU officially began operating in January 1971, a time of strong growth for credit unions around the world. In Australia, credit unions took off after World War II when there was great need but also optimism and collective spirit. In the US during the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal undertook large public programs and passed progressive legislation including the Federal Credit Union Act.

In their book CUFA 50 Years, Greg Patmore and Mark Westcott outlined how the supercharging of credit union development in the US affected the global movement:
Following the Second World War both the US and Canadian credit union movements took a strong interest in promoting credit unions through the world, seeing their form of economic democracy as part of the struggle for a more democratic world in the Cold War. CUNA established in 1954 a World Extension Division to assist emerging national movements and became CUNA International in 1964.

In 1990, Richard Raxworthy recorded an oral history interview with Ken Miller who, among other things, was a Director of WOCCU. He was a participant in the discussions around dismantling the US based CUNA International and creating WOCCU in its stead.
CUNA International allowed delegates from around the world to vote on matters that effected US based credit unions. This was something Ken Miller understandably thought was odd. Ken and other international delegates thought that CUNA International was too US centric. He told Raxworthy that:

We felt that the international group should not be able to vote on domestic issues of American credit unions and that if international people were to become involved there should be a separate organisation which would be worldwide and which would not be totally dominated by the US. It should be worldwide in its own right. We’d talk about this and we’d find that there were many people who were responsive to it and agreed with us.

When I went back in 1968 we’d decided that we’d do something a bit more positive about that and so we wrote a paper that we took over and circulated among all the delegates to the 1968 meeting about the reason we saw that there should be an international organisation, not solely because of that paper but there were a number of other people who started to think along these lines and so it started to develop towards a World Society of Credit Unions.

While in hindsight it might seem that CUNA International was merely the testing ground for WOCCU, the group did make significant contributions. CUNA International provided fledgling national credit union movements with financial and philosophical expertise as well as much needed funds.

They also collected statistics on credit union development around the world, something that WOCCU is still doing today. CUNA International produced an annual International Credit Union Yearbook during its short lifespan. Australian Mutuals Archives holds a number of these in our collection and they are a great resource. For example, the 1967 Yearbook published statistics on credit unions in 75 countries.