Dear Members, Strategic Partners, and Volunteers.
In September 2019 I was invited to become Interim CEO at Stockport Credit Union for a period of nine months. The remit was to modernise the business, renew its customer service proposition and culture, modernise its processes, and prepare it for life in the digital age. It was a significant challenge, and that was of course before anyone had heard of that little thing called Covid.
Along the way, my part time interim role evolved into a full-time role that has now lasted three years. In that time the staff and volunteer team and the Board and I, working together, have fundamentally changed the organisation. We’ve delivered on all our original goals and have also delivered three consecutive years of record growth during the challenging pandemic period (during a time when some credit unions saw their loan books shrink). Our loan book has almost doubled in this period.
In addition, some other achievements of the last three years:
- We’ve completed an office move to larger, nicer offices which provide room for future growth and provide a more Covid-safe location for our team
- We’ve strengthened our staff team via a re-structure, in which new roles were created and additional people recruited
- At our 2022 AGM, we more than doubled the population that we can serve by extending our Common Bond to all SK Postcodes
- We’ve introduced external marketing services, and strengthened our social media presence
- We’ve welcomed record numbers of new members to credit union membership
- We’ve moved on-line, with a digital platform that provides a safer, faster, better experience This has allowed us to substantially improve our approach to customer service. We’ve also overhauled our approach to IT, modernising it and making it more secure
- We’ve further developed our relationships with a range of strategic partners
- We’ve improved our product range, including the introduction of our innovative Locked Winter Fuel Saver account to help members deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
The Stockport Credit Union of today is a very different, larger organisation to the one of 2019, and our ever-increasing membership is the beneficiary. I believe that SCU has a bright future.
As we move beyond the pandemic period, the next stage of the development of SCU is to enhance and embed some of the changes we have made, as well as to maximise the potential of the new Common Bond, all of which will take time. I’m now in my early 50’s and always planned to experience and achieve some new and different things in the coming decade, so I feel that the time is therefore ideal for me to hand on the baton to a new leader. The purpose of this message is to therefore confirm that recruitment will shortly commence for a new CEO, and I will be leaving SCU later in the year.
It’s been a real privilege to lead such a socially important business during such a challenging period. I will continue to take a keen interest in SCU and its progress after I leave.
Kind regards
Jonathan