Virgin is looking to make Canadian banking cool!

By Tim McAlpine

According to the Financial Post, Virgin is planning to bring its beloved mega brand to the Canadian banking space in the not-too-distant future. Virgin has been operating in the cellphone business in Canada for a few years now. Richard Branson, the billionaire founder and chairman of Virgin Group Ltd., says:

• Virgin is one of the world's most popular brands and has an uncanny ability to transcend categories.
   
• Virgin offer a range of banking services including peer-to-peer loans in the U.S. and personal banking services including credit cards and mortgages in the U.K., South Africa and Australia. They will bring these services to Canada.
   

• Virgin will employ its amazing marketing machine to disrupt the conservative Canadian retail banking space.

What can your credit union do?

Every new player in the space is going to dilute market share, but honestly, I think Virgin will mostly hurt the big banks by drawing attention to their weaknesses. This may actually create additional opportunities for credit unions to differentiate themselves in the wake of this increased attention.

For credit unions, now is the time to:

• Stop acting like just another bank.
   
• Live and breathe a highly differentiated brand. 
   
• Create game-changing products and services.
   
• Deepen member relationships.

This is the same stuff that I've been preaching for the past decade. Now might be a good time to get started.

P2P lending in Canada, eh? IOU Central launches.

By Tim McAlpine

Much like William Azaroff, I have been looking longingly South of the border at all of the new peer-to-peer lending services that Canadians can't utilize. Well, I can now personally test the Canadian P2P waters with a new service that launched in Canada this week—IOU Central.

I immediately setup an account, linked it to my credit union account and I am in the lending business. The setup process was dead easy, while still offering a number of security layers including e-mail verification and bank account verification.

It felt a little odd to offer up my social security number and my bank account number to a brand new entity that I only learned about hours ago. This will be the hardest thing for most people to get over.

I have only looked at the lending side of things so far. There are about a dozen people looking for loans—everything from debt consolidation to new appliances to funding a short film. The interface is clean and simple and you can easily finance a portion of someone's loan. I am looking forward to experimenting.

It's too bad that this didn't launch with a credit union affiliation like ZOPA did in the US. If it did have a credit union affiliation, I would feel more like I just setup "Tim's Credit Union" rather than the "Bank of Tim."

I was amazed at how fast I was able to setup my account and the fact that I did not need to leave my chair to do so. Credit union leaders need to take note and take action while the bankers stick to denial.

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