Dramatic Year of Growth for Plane Saver Credit Union

Published by Graham Tomlin for Credit Union Solutions Ltd in Central Government and also in Education, Health, Housing, Local Government

2011 was an amazing year for Plane Saver Credit Union as it absorbed the Version 2 permission and increased lending. The Plane Saver operation was moved to their newly purchased Head Office in Harlington and the first of four additional staff were recruited. With the Terminal 5 office adding more capacity the credit union saw significant growth in membership.

The audited accounts show an increase in the surplus before tax of 27.6% due to the increase in lending of £2.5M.

Overall there was an increase in assets of £3.8M to £25M.

Members saved £5.5M Savers in Plane Saver’s Cash ISA reaping a 3.5% reward for their loyalty.

Graham Tomlin Plane Saver’s Treasurer said.

“This year has been very challenging, with the Terminal 5 operation getting into swing and the need to add further staff to cope with the growth in members.

Nevertheless we have grown our loan book, assets and membership and to cap it all moved the entire operation 2 miles down the road to our new office.

Our Marketing Team has successfully developed PSCU into a trusted brand; the Lending Staff have increased lending and the Finance Staff have kept our books in good order.

There are very few credit unions with a bad debt provision to match ours at just 1.5%.

This is the ideal platform for us to undertake our biggest challenge yet which is to apply for permission from the FSA to grant mortgages. Work has begun on the application which it is hoped will be submitted early next year. For us this is the obvious next step because we have a lot of member savings which we need to put to good use and banks and building societies seem to be pretty unwilling to lend at present. A survey of our members indicates that they trust us to provide a mortgage and are keen for us to do it as soon as possible. It would appear that mortgages of up to £250,000 repayable over 25 years at a rate of interest fixed for the term of the loan of between 3% and 5% would be the subject of significant interest and would hopefully address our growing cash mountain of £10M.