History of Advance Credit Union

History of Advance Credit Union

Advance Credit Union was founded in 1989 as the Erdington and District Credit Union Ltd by a group of people with a common interest who joined together to save money and then loan it out to each other at a small cost.

In 2004 we became the North Birmingham Community Credit Union Ltd (NBCCU), merging Credit Unions in Erdington, Sutton Coldfield, Castle Vale, Kingstanding, then incorporating Saltley District Credit Union in 2007.

In April 2013 we changed our name to Advance Credit Union Ltd to better reflect the growth and outlook of the credit union.

Membership has continued to grow to more than 5,000 adults and 400 juniors. We hold assets in excess of £4million and lend more than £2.8m each year. We have office premises in Erdington plus a new branch in Birmingham city centre, and community based Collection Points throughout our region operated by our volunteers and partner organisations.

2019 was our 30th anniversary as a credit union! To celebrate this milestone we extended our Common Bond area to include all 'B' postcodes so we now cover the whole of Birmingham, Tamworth, Redditch and Solihull Borough. In 2019 we achieved Fairbanking 5-star status for our loans, employed 2 additional staff, Small Heath Credit Union transferred to AdvanceCU and we continued to see steady growth in active members, savings and loans.

2020 and Covid-19 has been a difficult year for all of us, we worked to support our Members to ensure they had money available when they needed it, we continued to grow with new Members joining us during the pandemic.
2021 sees the opening of our new city centre branch at 118 Corporation Street; bringing credit union to even more people in our region. Saving regularly and borrowing affordably remain core to what we do and we have great things planned to continue growing as we serve the communities of Birmingham and Solihull. 

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