Lessons in operationalizing social finance: the case of Vancouver City Savings Credit Union

Abstract

With $16.2 billion of assets the Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) has the largest asset base of any member of the Global Alliance on Banking and Values, a global association of ethical banks, and also has the largest asset base of Canada's credit unions. This article analyses the social financing Vancity conducts and the disclosure of the social impact of the products and services they offer. The results suggest that they are on the path to realizing a 100% social finance portfolio but that they have not arrived there yet. In particular, their personal retail products and services still offer room for improvement. Furthermore, their reporting lacks an indicator based on comparative figures that would allow stakeholders to compare the impact of Vancity's products and services  with those of other financial institutions.

Keywords:

• impact investing
• social bank
• Vancity
• credit unions
• GABV
• social finance institutions

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Export Development Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, SiG@Waterloo and the McConnell Foundation for supporting the research for this paper.

Notes

The Solidarity Funds in Quebec, created in 1983, is not seen as an SRI fund but rather as a social impact fund.

Resilient Capital is an example of such an innovation. Launched in 2011 this fund provides social enterprises access to capital.

In the late 1960s Vancity created the VCS Housing Developments Ltd subsidiary to provide affordable housing to its members in the often bubble-prone Vancouver real estate market. Similarly, in the 1970s Vancity's failed Seed Capital programme was set up to provide start-up loans to interesting business ideas, and even though this programme was closed down much of the learning from it went into their later social enterprise development activities (Hardin 1996).