John Tancevski

Last week we heard from John Tancevski on Community First Bank’s 2019 court victory on behalf of all mutuals for use of the term “community bank”. Now let’s hear the rest of his mutual journey.

Upon learning of John’s recent retirement, we sought him out for an interview to record his thoughts for the historical record. John grew up and is based in the Illawarra and the interview takes in his early days, his first job at BHP where he was introduced to mutuals and his roles at City Coast Credit Union, Australian National Credit Union and finally his 20 years at the helm of Community First Bank.

Several of his tales stand out including his introduction to credit unions:

I started work at BHP steel, which is now Bluescope, but when I had my first job, I literally was a trainee, and my boss walked up to me and said, Where are you banking son? I said, Well, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll work it out in the next couple of weeks. I might go up the road to bank. No, we’ve got a credit union, bank with them. He literally walked me down the road, knocked on this hole in the wall, which is a little screen. The shutter pulled up said, This is Johnny’s new trainee. He’s going to bank with us. They opened an account for me. Come back on Thursday when you get paid. I came back on Thursday, the hole in the wall opened up, and I was a member of AIS Employees Credit Union.

AIS stood for Australian Iron and Steel Employees and AIS Employees Credit Union became City Coast Credit Union in 1986. In 1993, John became Manager Corporate Services at City Coast and for a time it’s Acting CEO. Among other achievements, he told us about City Coast’s trainee program he helped initiate:

One of the best achievements we had was this concept of traineeships. So, we’d bring in about 10 kids, 18 years old, every year as part of the workforce. They’d do a transfer through the various departments of the credit union and learned banking. We had a philosophy. I couldn’t teach you to smile, but I could teach you to bank. So, we actually gave these kids opportunities. They stayed with us for four years until they finished their diplomas or degrees, whatever they were studying, and then they went on to bigger and better things. But we did that for five or six years, and with the benefit of hindsight, that was one of the best education programs I think I’ve ever seen.

Naturally, John discusses his journey at Community First Bank but for that you’ll need to access his interview transcript here.