Our Stories

Stan Arneil was a giant of the credit union movement in Australia. He was also regarded as a “complex” and “controversial figure”. In an oral history interview from 1991, former editor of Australian Credit Unions Magazine, Maggie Niven, described Stan as a “visionary and a doer”. Mr Arneil was born in Katoomba, NSW, in 1918…

Karpaty Ukrainian Credit Union was registered on 7 January 1971 and on 1 January 2010 it merged with Sydney Credit Union (today Australian Mutual Bank). We have now published a digitised version of the small history Karpaty Ukrainian Credit Union – 25 Years of Service. Read it here. Karpaty Ukrainian Credit Union – 25 Years…

We are continuing to add more of our digital collection to our website and this little batch of digitised CPS Credit Society photographs from the 1980s and 1990s is the latest instalment. CPS Credit Society was registered as the Commonwealth Public Service (Qld) Co-operative Savings and Loans Society in Brisbane in 1960. In 1968 the…

In times gone by mutuals found regular television advertising a worthwhile promotional pursuit. There were lots of guaranteed eyeballs on free to air television pre streaming. Queensland Teachers Credit Union produced these two 30 second ads for free to air broadcast television in 2004. We hold them on VHS tape and digitised them last year….

The Tasmanians have historically done things a bit differently in customer owned banking. This can be seen in the running of the Tasmanian Credit Union League (TASCUL) which oversaw the Tasmanian credit union movement from 1965-1992 when the state leagues were absorbed into the new national body Cuscal. According to the official record most of…

Indeed, the times are ever a changing and NSW Teachers Credit Union (today Teachers Mutual Bank) channeled Bob Dylan for this informative and fun promotional video in 1985. We digitised this VHS video held in our collection in 2020 and we are now making it permanently available online. The video foreshadows the changes coming to…

Anyone involved in the customer owned banking industry who hasn’t read People before Profit: the Credit Union Movement in Australia by Gary Lewis, should. It was published in 1996 on the 50th anniversary of the first ‘official’ credit union, Universal Credit Union. Gary worked on the book in our archives. Gary Lewis was a historian…

The following is an overview of the history of Australian customer owned banking peak bodies, with a focus on credit union history. For a more detailed analysis contact us and we can provide you with some documentation. COBA’s mission is “to advocate, champion, connect, strengthen and evolve, so that customer-owned banks can continue to flourish…

Welcome to another peek inside the Australian Mutuals Archives film and video vault! Please enjoy this video from 1992 called “We’ll take care of you”, produced by Police Credit Union (now Police Bank). The video goes for about 8 minutes and thus is too long for general promotional use but was largely intended to be…

Tomorrow is the 76th International Credit Union Day (ICU Day).  ICU Day is a popular event organised by WOCCU (World Council of Credit Unions) celebrated this year under the theme One World Through Cooperative Finance. WOCCU recently elected a new Board Chair, COBA CEO Mike Lawrence. Mike gave us #ICUDay2024 pins to help promote the…

History buffs don’t have off hours and scanning one of my history feeds on Facebook I did a double take when I noticed a photo (above) of a shop front in Cronulla, NSW branded “RSL Building Society”. The photo was from the 1970s and shows the building society branch wedged between a coffee shop and…

Many people working in mutual banks and credit unions today would know of CUSCAL but what about CUFSAL? CUFSAL is an acronym for Credit Union Financial Services Australia Limited and was created in 1985 by the Australian Federation of Credit Unions Ltd (AFCUL). It was established as a national presence for credit unions in the…