After many years of working for Servus, I was extremely fed up with how they operate and I went to a chartered bank. First thing I realized is that Servus is indeed a Bank! Servus says they don't have shareholders like a bank does, however I seen every year that Servus has to make an amount of profit sharing each year. ( Yes, has to). In the last few years you will see the amount has been $50 million or fairly close. If they don't make a substantial amount of profit shares then they don't have a differentiator to say look we are different than the banks. The one way they are different from a bank is that Servus needs deposits in order to fund loans, There is huge pressure for staff to obtain your deposit money. Huge pressure. The banks don't have to focus that much pressure on deposits because the banks own their own suite of mutual funds and have other income streams, whereas Servus does not own their own mutual funds and has less income streams available to them. They say they are more community focused. The banks are equally so and spend more money on the communities they serve. Also over the years Servus has said that working at the chartered banks is high stress and high pressure, well I can tell you Servus is extremely high pressure and high stress because they have sales targets that are hard to achieve. If you are not achieving your targets you are placed on a performance improvement plan, and if you are still not improving eventually they will fire you due to non performance. Is that the Credit Union way?? Even if you have done all you physically can to make those targets? Honestly this is why current and former staff have went to CBC Go Public in the past because it was and is that bad.
Two days a week in our morning meetings for 20-40 minutes each day for years, all we did was exhaust ways to find and drum up business. It was morally degrading.
NOW - the fact is that Servus has some very outdated computer systems (can you say dos?) and most of their systems have a lack of integration which means information created on one system doesn't carry over to the other system you may need to use. (eg - banking system does not talk to credit card system, nor mutual fund system) and this creates a huge pile of paperwork and administrative time which greatly eats time that you should be selling. Furthermore, staff are pushed hard to volunteer at community functions and events and it's not good enough to represent the company by wearing a Servus shirt and being visible in the community, oh no, you are to actively engage people in banking conversation and convince them to do their banking at Servus. You are measured on this in your performance review. You know you are at the bottom of the financial services pile when you are forced to go residentially door to door to drum up business. Truly humiliating.
Saying Servus is high tech is like saying the Commodore 64 computer is the latest and greatest technology available. They will get there I guess, but where Servus wants you to come into the branch to speak to an advisor (so they can sell you something), the banks have software built into their online and mobile banking platforms that do a better job and you won't be pressured by a Servus staff who has been trained to sneakily get you to identify a problem you may never have.
Most of the sales staff (tellers and advisors) at Servus don't like the way they are forced to speak to their members and do their jobs. Most sales staff are disgruntled. I found Servus to be not a good place to work and after I left, also not a good place to bank. Even when I was working there I would shake my head at how we placed obstacles in front of our members and staff and make things difficult.
