Who do you think the brand new OpenAustralia Foundation should bank with?
This could either be a traditional bank or a credit union. We trust your combined wisdom.
Stuff we are looking for:
- Is Australian
- Offers Internet banking
- Has an ethical investment policy
- Is nice to non-profits like us
OpenAustralia Foundation’s registered office is in Glenbrook, NSW. Ideally it would also have an office nearby (in the greater Sydney area) but this is not essential
Please let us know by commenting on this post. Any personal experiences you can tell us about is always helpful, including those to definitely avoid!
We’re planning on making a final decision in the next week or so. We’ll let you know which way we go.
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9 Comments
Credit Union such as http://www.PNCS.com.au
From their web site:
The main difference between Police & Nurses and a bank is that all profits that we make are reinvested into the Society – not paid as dividends to external shareholders. This enables us to provide our members with lower fees, competitive rates and better member services, products and technology.
For the past two years we have won the “Best Credit Union” award from the Australian Banking & Finance Magazine. Considering there are 130 credit societies and credit unions in Australia, we’re very happy.
In a recent independent survey of our members, we scored a 91% satisfaction rating so we’re not only Australia’s best credit society, we seem to be the happiest one too!
Anyone can become a member of Police & Nurses. You don’t need to be a police officer or a nurse to benefit from our range of products and services.
******Note For Full Disclosure*******
My Wife works for them in their call center
you could do worse then members equity – not sure on investment policy but good on fees etc
Bendigo
Would Bendigo’s Community Sector Banking offer enough facilities? http://www.csbanking.com.au/
bendigo community bank
I suggest MECU, they claim to offer ethical banking and investments, with various schemes on offer for private investors and borrowers.. I presume they also offer such for organisations as well.
They’ve been very competent and quick when I’ve dealt with them, and their internet banking site is decent. (At least, it’s better than all the previous ones I’ve used.)
It would be great to support an institution that’s innovating in the online banking space, rather than just ticking the “Has online banking” checkbox.
I’m with a credit union who outsources their internet banking to TSW/NetTeller, and the interface and software are just terrible, so it’s quite possible to have great values and costs and awful tech.
After all, we all want secure RSS feeds of our transactions, right? ;-)
Members Equity works for me.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on the ethical investment thing (N.B. this is irrelevant to Members Equity; I have no idea what if any their ethical investment policy is). The fundamental problem is ‘whose ethics?’. For example, most ethical investment policies prohibit having anything to do with uranium, whereas I happen to think nuclear energy is our best hope for avoiding dangerous climate change. I’d want to see exactly what they mean by ‘ethical’, to see that it accords with what you consider to be ethical, before signing up – if you can be bothered.
Bendigo.