Ontario credit unions seek to boost awareness with high-profile campaign

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Tired of largely being an after-thought among financial institutions, Ontario's credit unions are shifting strategies and shaking up the market with an expensive advertising blitz and awareness campaign.

For the first time, the province's credit unions have come together to buy ads during high-profile television programming such as The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live and NFL broadcasts – a game plan designed to grab attention from the Big Six banks that dominate Canada's financial landscape.

The campaign is a rare, high-profile effort for these co-operatives, which are best known for giving profits back to their members. Unlike British Columbia-based credit unions, such as Vancouver City Savings Credit Union and Coastal Community Credit Union, which came together in the 1990s to present a united image using their combined promotional budgets, Ontario's credit unions have operated largely independently until now.

"While we're a co-operative system, we haven't done as good of a job of leveraging collaboration," said Bill Maurin, chief executive officer of Meridian Credit Union, one of Ontario's largest credit unions.

The moves come at a crucial moment. The major Canadian financial institutions have consolidated the market since the financial crisis, buying foreign-owned players such as ING Bank Canada and Ally Financial and the domestic operations of Standard Life. That has strengthened their market clout and made it even harder for credit unions to stand out.

Ontario is home to eight of the country's 20 fastest growing cities, said Kelly McGiffin, CEO of FirstOntario Credit Union, making it an especially attractive region for potential expansion. "There's a massive opportunity for credit unions to make a difference."

Credit unions in other provinces face less of an awareness deficit than those in Ontario. Desjardins is a dominant player in Quebec, and in British Columbia, about 20 per cent of personal and commercial banking assets belong to credit unions, while that number spikes to 40 per cent in Manitoba, according to Meridian. The equivalent figure in Ontario is just 4 per cent.

When Mr. McGiffin moved from B.C. in 2007 to run FirstOntario, he was shocked by the state of the credit union market in Canada's most populous province. He decided to foster the same collaboration he had experienced in B.C. "It struck me immediately that credit unions are very much unknown and underutilized in Ontario," he said. "The co-operative model is generally something that resonates with Canadians."

However, Ontario is a particularly hard market to crack because five of the six biggest banks are headquartered in Toronto, and they protect their home turf. The province's credit union market is fractured among dozens of credit unions, many of whom specialize in smaller centres such as Kitchener-Waterloo and Niagara Falls.

To start solving the awareness issue, the province's 11 largest credit unions came together a few years ago. When they first sat down, the executives went around the table and asked each other to identify their biggest hurdle. "Unanimously, the answer was awareness, awareness, awareness," Mr. Maurin said. Credit unions have a lot of products and good prices, he added. "The issue is, not enough people know about us."

When it comes to public awareness of credit unions, the numbers are striking relative to the big banks. "Unaided awareness" of Ontario credit unions is in single digits, according to Meridian, while "aided awareness" is 45 per cent of the population. The equivalent numbers for the banks are 85 to 90 per cent unaided, and 97 per cent aided.

Though the credit unions are striving to increase their profile among Ontarians, they're also doing their best to not ruffle feathers with the country's dominant financial institutions. "I don't like the [phrase] 'taking on the banks,'" said Steve Bolton, the head of Ontario's Libro Credit Union. He describes the campaign in less aggressive terms: "We want to raise awareness that there are credible alternatives."