In 1959, parish members at St. Edmund’s church in Croydon, Eastern Melbourne, created a community credit union called St. Edmund's Croydon Co-operative Credit Society. We should remember that in the early days of the credit union movement in Victoria the designation “co-operative credit society” was preferred to “credit union” in order to differentiate themselves from the trade union movement. This eventually changed when “credit union” provided better name recognition.
In 1981, their name was officially changed to Croydon and District Credit Co-operative but it was branded and commonly known as Croydon and District Community Credit Union or just Croydon and District Credit Union. In 1987, the Victorian Credit Co-operative Association’s (VCCA) Common Bond journal published an interview with Toos Eggers, the General Manager of Croydon and District. Toos presided over significant growth of the credit union and she shared some of her interesting thoughts on the Victorian credit union movement.
When Toos took over as General Manager, the membership of the credit union was only 400. After six years of her leadership they boasted 6000 members and assets over $8 million. She felt that a big part of that success was good customer service:
“You’ve got to have pleasant people who are willing to help the members. I’m always saying to the staff that one member going dissatisfied out the door can do more than 20 happy members, because they can tell someone that we have done something wrong to them”, said Toos.
“I always say that they own the credit union as much as I do. They seem surprised when you say it, at first, but I explain to them they have the right to go to the Board if there is something I can’t help them with”, She said.
She went on to say that, “to give members the best possible service you have to offer more services. People expect it. They don’t expect you to lend $3000 or $5000 as a maximum, you’ve got to offer more”.
She also presided over the expansion to Ringwood which included buying the building that housed the Ringwood branch. “I’m glad we purchased it because it will be worth quite a bit in a few years. I’ve bought it for the future”, said Toos.
Furthermore, the shopping centre expanded soon after, and the credit union’s office was positioned directly opposite the main entrance – a most desirable location. Another benefit of the site was unexpected. It previously housed a building society, a fact which Toos’ team was looking forward to cashing in on.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the interview is Toos’ thoughts on cooperation between credit unions, especially with regards to marketing:
“There was a lot of hard work from the VCCA [producing] the cheque accounts and we could have all paid some money to launch it on television. I can’t do that because I’m too small. If you see an ad on television which just says ‘credit unions’ or ‘why don’t you see your credit union for a low cost loan’ or whatever, we’ll all benefit. You don’t need to say ‘I am Croydon’ …
“I think that credit unions should meet more … we used to have the Eastern Chapter, and that was a pretty good thing to have”, said Toos.
In 1995, Croydon & District Credit Union changed its name to Maroondah Credit Union and it merged with Mecu in 2009, which became Bank Australia.
