Credit Union (merged)

System

How do you join a credit union and what benefits are there over a normal high street bank ?

irish_eyes

Call into the branch you are interested in joining and find out when the next meeting for new members is. You may need someone who is already a member to act as referee for you, that's the way I joined. The best benefit is that you can borrow small sums of money at short notice (and I'm talking about the kind of sums that would have you laughed at in some of the major banks!). You can agree a rate of repayment that suits you, the interest rates are reasonable and you can overpay your repayments if you can afford it. Most CUs also offer death benefit insurance for members, it costs about £12 a year and pays out about £2000 should you die and will cover any money you have borrowed from the CU. My branch is open all day on a saturday which is handy. They also are involved in community stuff like the CU quizz for schools. I like the idea of local people helping each other out too. Hope this helps.

blueberrypie

But do remember that NI credit unions aren't covered by the scheme that guarantees your savings if the institution holding them goes bust - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7862643.stm

arkonite_babe

We have a thread similar to this already, I'll add your query to it so all the replies are together. Posts are listed in date order so you'll need to read from the beginning to catch up