News and Features
The Queen of Vancity
By Frances Bula published Sep 1, 2009
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The month before Tamara Vrooman took over as CEO of Vancity, the financial system fell apart. Can she reinvent the credit union?
It’s an hour until the doors open at Vancity Branch 46, set in North Vancouver near the Second Narrows Bridge. Sixteen people cluster in the staff room, where a platter of Smartie-studded cookies, muffins, and croissants awaits them. It sits almost untouched—attention is fixed on the blond woman in the navy pinstriped suit, younger than many of them but with a born-to-rule composure. Tamara Vrooman, 41, whose hands move through the air in impeccably manicured swoops and punctuation points as she talks, is answering one polite but anxious question after another. Today’s topic? The same as every other day’s, in every Vancity office around Metro Vancouver: the future of the credit union and its struggle to redefine itself.
Account manager Ramin Nazaradeh worries that Vancity, which used to be renowned for pioneering cool things, hasn’t come up with anything new for a very long time. Senior financial-services rep Natalie Wieser frets that there’s been so much institutional change that people feel like the credit union is just a “big bank.” And financial-services officer Nina Zhao wonders what to say when customers ask why Vancity doesn’t give them free chequing like Coast Capital does.
Vrooman answers with a deft contrapuntal blend of thematic elements, fitting for someone who has played everything from bass to flute. You people are the foundation of this business. We show them we’re different because we’re about more than just free chequing or a place to make a quick buck on your RRSPs—we’re about connecting, about making the community a better place. “Our service model is not about a transaction,” she says, “it’s about a relationship. In order to do that, I’ve got to get you guys off the hamster wheel of the transaction.” She throws out the occasional wry joke, reminding them of when Vancity’s computer systems were so primitive that members said transaction statements looked “like ransom notes.” Did she know what she was getting into when she walked away from her job as B.C.’s deputy finance minister, where she’d made a name for herself as a whiz-kid bureaucrat? “If I knew 18 months ago what I know today, I maybe could have approached things a little bit faster, smarter, in terms of the economic change that we faced. But honestly, absolutely no regrets.”
Vrooman has been on a wild ride in the two years since she first walked into her office at the east end of False Creek. The month before she started, the North American banking system fell off a mortgage-backed cliff. Vancity profits dropped by almost 30 percent that year. And it quickly became apparent that many of Vancity’s clients were not willing to cut it any slack for niceness. “I don’t care how frickin’ green or community-oriented this credit union is. I don’t pay banking fees for ineptitude,” was a not-atypical comment posted online by disgruntled customer Darren Barefoot.
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There is definitely much work to be done and I for one, believe she can do it. But, the housing crisis has to stabilize first. No matter what anyone does with our financial and banking system, home mortgage loan underwriting process that enables borrowers to buy-up excess inventory without breaking the bank must be adopted.
