As we’ve detailed in numerous ways in our blog, the 1980s and 90s were transformative for mutuals and indeed for society at large. It was during this time that mergers and name changes were at their peak. An interesting case study of this period is First Pacific Credit Union which was based in the Northern Rivers region of NSW.
First Pacific was registered as Richmond-Tweed Postal Employees Credit Union Limited on 14th February 1969. The credit union was profiled in the February 1998 edition of Cuscal’s Directions magazine. In the article First Pacific General Manager, Paul Kelly, was asked about the change of name:
“Historically our credit union serviced the Telstra and Australia Post industries, but since then we have had a number of mergers. The old name didn’t reflect who we were and couldn’t take us to where we were heading”, said Kelly.
“First Pacific is an inclusive name for our area and it still projects the friendly credit union appeal. The new corporate livery also projects this friendliness. The writing in the logo is in a soft style rather than hard block letters”, said Kelly.
The “new corporate livery” refers in part to the new First Pacific headquarters that had just opened in Lismore. Directions writes that “the stylish building was designed by Sydney architects Dowse Paull Machon and reflects the credit union’s ‘pacific’ theme featuring cool colours generally associated with a tropical beach environment”.
Another sign of the times covered in the article was discussion of First Pacific’s participation in a pilot program called the Member Relationship Management Program (MRMP) designed by the Questor Group.
The article notes that:
The major feature of the program is the appointment of three staff members as Membership Relationship Mangers (MRMs). After extensive training, the role of the MRMs is to collect member information. From this information, the MRMs guide members to the service best suited to them and then manage the service relationship throughout the process.
“Member enquiries are changing and they are no longer just basic account queries so we needed to increase our skills to deal with this. We were also concerned that member contact was being adversely affected by the time needed to fulfil compliance issues”, said Kelly.
First Pacific Credit Union merged with Summerland Credit Union (now Summerland Bank) in 2007.
