Coop fortnight 2020 – principle no.6 Cooperation Among Cooperatives

Throughout the last two weeks Northern Community Bank has taken the opportunity to assess why cooperative values and principles make us different from many businesses. The current COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that when communities cooperate, we can see changes in society for the better.

Northern Community Bank is a financial cooperative providing savings accounts and affordable borrowing. The only way that we could have continued to develop and grow over the past 38 years is by cooperating with other community banks in the region and nationally.

Cooperation Among Cooperatives

 Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the Co-operative Movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.

What does the 6th principle ‘Cooperation Among Cooperatives’ mean to Northern Community Bank?

Northern Community Bank participate in many forums with local, nation and international community banks where we share best practice and ideas. Many of these forums are supported and facilitated by our trade body ABCUL. This may be a community bank that has developed or identified software that will benefit our members or a supplier of stationary which will reduce costs for the community bank. A recent example is the Nivo app that we successfully launched in November 2019. To say that it has been welcomed warmly by members would be understatement – the majority love the ability to complete loan application, transfer money or e-sign documents without visiting a branch. We were introduced to Nivo by friends from South Manchester Community bank, who showed us the app in action and how it could benefit members.

Other community banks have used their partnerships with businesses to bring best practice from corporate companies to the credit union model. Training session with Barclays Bank staff that have helped Northern Community Bank, were initiated through a Director at CashBox Community bank in Tameside.

We are also part of the Cooperative UK network which brings thousands of co-operatives together under one umbrella. It is often encouraging to see where we have similarities we take for granted or areas where we can improve or promote our cooperative values and principles. Northern Community Bank also share our knowledge and skills to help the credit union movement regularly. We recognise that we are stronger when we cooperate.

We believe co-operative solutions can help to rebuild the economy and benefit the whole community #KeepCooperating