Case Study
VanCity Credit Union: Strategy in Financial Services
VanCity is one of the most successful Canadian credit unions but clearly at a crossroad. Working for the Senior VP in charge of strategy, you have been asked to analyze VanCity's competitive position, its business model, and its challenges in preparation for a comprehensive strategic review of the business.
Having collected the necessary data and analyzed it, you are preparing an executive memo to the CEO or a presentation to the board on the road ahead.
The following questions are only meant to guide your analysis:
1. What is a credit union? How does it di er from a commerical bank or S&L? How does a credit union's business model vary from the rest of the industry?
2. What are the key success factors in the nancial services industry? How does VanCity stack up against the competition?
3. How is VanCity's competitive envrionment changing? Why? What has been their response so far and why or why not is it working?
4. How well has VanCity been performing? What is the value its competitive advantage and how is it being eroded?
(a) Is the value of VanCity's competitive advantage changing? Why or why not?
(b) Why has management been so slow to respond?
5. What strategic actions would you recommend? How are they going to remedy the situation?
(a) Distinguish between short-term xes and long-term solutions. What problems, if any, do you foresee, and how would you overcome them?
(b) How would you implement your strategic plan?