Client:
Birmingham Credit Union Development Agency
 
Date completed:
June 1999
 
Project description:
BCUDA commissioned Local Economy Solutions (Formerly Social Economy Solutions) to review past, present and future Credit Union development in Birmingham and evaluate how far Credit Unions are facilitating access to affordable financial services. The purpose of the project was to develop an up to date strategic framework for Credit Union development in Birmingham over the next ten years in order to enable community banking services to be provided for households excluded from mainstream provision. The main elements of the project involved:

• A detailed analysis of the performance of existing credit unions. including analysis of historical patterns of membership growth, the profile of existing members detailed analysis of saving and loan patterns and performance;
• A review of the experiences of other Credit Unions nationally in relation to the development of additional services, best practice and benchmarking in relation to performance.  This comprised both a detailed postal questionnaire of selected Credit Unions
• A postal survey of Credit Union support agencies nationally.
• design and implementation of a self completion questionnaire - distributed to  current credit union members in Birmingham, through each credit union
• A capacity review of the existing Credit Union membership infrastructure within Birmingham. This involved detailed interviews with each Community and Associational Credit Union in Birmingham and the compilation of a tailored Credit Union development support pack for each of these.   
• Detailed strategy development