Dr Vern Harvey is one of the most influential individuals in the modern era of mutuals. He assisted Reg Elliott and his team on Project Renewal which led to the dissolution of the state credit union leagues and the creation of Cuscal as the new national peak body.  He took over the leadership of Cuscal in 1993 and held the reigns until the year 20...

Here is the latest edition of the Archives Newsletter..........

Australian Mutuals History had a most successful COBA 2023 Convention on the Gold Coast. We were represented by almost our full team in Chair Greg Stevens, Treasurer Rosemary Harris, Trustees Joanne O’Donnell, Adeline Siew, Melissa Treacy and Senior Archivist Ben Woods. With such a solid representation we were able to spread our wings and seek out...

The history of Transport Mutual Credit Union (TMCU) is a classic Australian credit union story. However, they have bucked the merge-to-grow-and-prosper trend and have happily maintained their niche based in Surry Hills, in inner Sydney. TMCU was begun by and for the staff of the NSW Department of Main Roads and their families. This has been a comm...

This film titled “A Moment of Opportunity” was produced by Cuscal in 1996. We recently digitised it as part of an ongoing project to preserve and make available the historically interesting and indeed entertaining films in our collection. Cuscal - "A Moment of Opportunity" (ca.1996) - YouTube “A Moment of Opportunity” is a slick six-minute film p...

The Directors virtually ran the credit union with a couple of other people who weren't Directors but were very helpful. It was all voluntary work in the early days. A lot of it was done during work time and the employer was happy with that because they knew that the employees were getting benefits out of it. It was all paper based, people brought...

The prime purpose of this organisation is to help one another, and it is deeply gratifying to see this principle in operation. To see those among us, who for any number of reasons, have found themselves in financial difficulties with literally no avenue for relief, suddenly find the solution to their dilemma is far more rewarding than any result me...

Well, let me explain something, Gateway is very unique …  In fact, I think there's only one in the world as far as I could work out. Gateway used to be called the Commonwealth Bank Officers Association Credit Union. And to repeat, as far as I know, we were the only credit union in the world set up by bankers, for bankers. And at one stage, before m...

Margaret Young was the credit union’s very first employee when she started with Bankstown City Credit Union in April 1966 on a part-time basis. From this time, she has witnessed the credit union change its bond from industrial to community, expand its member facilities and adopt new technologies – Alex Genovese – Bankstown City Credit Union CEO Th...