“Police Bank started in 1964 with the purpose of promoting the principles of a member-owned financial institution, providing a real alternative to the Big Four banks.”
Bruce Williams, CEO of the bank explains: Police Bank originally started off back in 1964 as Police Credit Union Number One Limited for the purpose of providing financial accommodation for police officers in number one division in Clarence. Around 1968, that was expanded to serving officers statewide. Today, our main focus is on servicing present and former police officers and their families. That hasn’t changed, even though we run two brands: police and customs. Customs is a far smaller brand compared to what we call ’the police family.’
”The police family encompasses a lot of organisations such as Police Legacy, which is our charity of choice; and then you have the Police Association, which is the police union, and we do a lot of work with them; and then there’s the Police Benevolent Fund, the Police Provident Fund, Women and Policing, the Police Games, and the Retired Police Officers Association. We do a lot of work with them in terms of how staff, what I call press the flesh, with them. And its more than just finance; we actually make sure that we are seen as part of the police family. Thats basically our business in a nutshell. We have a defined market.”
According to Bruce, Police Bank is always looking at ways to extend its services organically to non-police members, although this is not a key focus in the banks plans for future expansion and growth. If the opportunity comes knocking at the door, we certainly don’t knock it back. Yes, there’s a certain push in our books that is non-related, but we don’t spend marketing dollars or human resources going out and obtaining it. It comes through to us by word of mouth basically.
Within our market, there is still growth to be had, but, of course, you can’t take that for granted. The resources that we put into that will increase each year. We have a few initiatives happening that we hope to get more out of in the present market.