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Posted August 27, 2009 in Blog, Project Updates by Ryan

Talking to Steve from Creative Arts CU

Megan and I met today with Steve Mumford, CEO of the Creative Arts Savings and Credit Union. Hearing Steve’s stories and insights was exciting. He speaks softly, but is so energetic and passionate.

creative-arts-cu-website

The Creative Arts & Savings Credit Union is the most recently chartered credit union in the province and grew out of a project at ACTRA, a union of actors and performers, but is pursuing the vision of serving all types of creative professionals.

Steve had worked at Rochdale Credit Union for more than 20 years when he was approached by ACTRA to become the founding CEO at the new credit union.

He recalled that at a meeting of other credit union managers they had laughed at the notion of a credit union for performers as an “impossible dream.”

Because performers work on productions and often supplement their income with other jobs, banks see them as not having stable income and as poor credit risks even though performers’ incomes are higher than average, Steve told us.

By considering the unique employment situation of their members they can make an accurate assessment of the risk. And if they do reject the application, they explain why.

They just got their charter last year, but they have already paid off the $800,000 loan from ACTRA for the startup costs and they are going to have a launch celebration in October.

We talked with Steve for almost two hours and at the end we asked him whether he had any more advice for us.

He said, “Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Don’t be deterred.”

2 Comments to “Talking to Steve from Creative Arts CU”

  • Evelyn
    September 1, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    Hey Ryan and Megan,
    This idea sounds really interesting! I am not sure what stage of the project you are at right now, and this maybe a redundant comment, but have you thought about maybe running the credit union as a co-operative? So student who borrow/deposit funds also become owners of the Credit Union- thus compelling them to “volunteer” for the credit union? So for example, if I want to borrow 2000 from the credit union, I can reduce my interest charges say from 10% to 5% by volunteering at the union for 10 hrs per week. If I “invest” into the union, i.e., make a 2000 deposit. I get part of the investment income from either primary or secondary investment. Investors would be compelled to manage their investment by participating in credit approval process.

  • Waterloo Banking Project — Learning more about Ontario’s newest credit union
    October 4, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    [...] and I had met with the CEO Steve Mumford, but he was hired about a year before they were granted their [...]

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