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What’s in a
name?
Many folks have
asked us about our name change to 1st Valley Credit
Union. Here is the background on the name changes.
- We changed our name to
San Bernardino Credit Union when we added the cities of San
Bernardino, Rialto, Colton, Highland, Loma Linda, and Grand
Terrace to our field of membership. As we served more than
just the city employees of San Bernardino, the name better
reflected our service area. We never left serving the city
of San Bernardino, we just added more people being eligible
for membership. The reason for the increase in membership
had to do with the financial well being of the credit
union. Many members were very desirous of new and improved
services. We couldn’t afford to have the current membership
bear the expenses alone and still offer competitive
pricing. The only rational way to increase services is to
add more members. Services are expensive to add and members
not using the new services shouldn’t be subsidizing those
that used the service. We recognize that most people (if
not all) don’t like paying for services that they don’t use.
- We then changed our
name to 1st Valley Credit Union as there was name
confusion with Arrowhead Credit Union. When we were out
promoting our services, we were constantly told that “I’m a
member of your credit union and I do my banking at the 40th
Street branch.” We don’t have a branch there. After two
years of promoting Arrowhead Credit Union, we decided to
change the name and stop the confusion. With 20/20
hindsight, we should have asked the membership about the
name change. When we changed the name the first time, no
one commented. Based upon that, we didn’t query the
membership on a new name. We are sorry that that has caused
hard feelings, as that was never our intent.
Some other
questions and comments have come up regarding the name change
that we would like to put to rest:
- We have not merged into
or been taken over by another financial organization.
- We have not deserted
our City membership.
- We have not become a
bank or otherwise changed the nature of our charter.
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