Alterna Savings to leave its downtown Peterborough location, angering some longtime members

The Peterborough branch of Alterna Savings is leaving its downtown location at 167 Brock Street and moving more than five kilometres away to Mapleridge Plaza on Lansdowne Street West. The move will happen at the end of September, a sign in the front window of the branch states.

Kim Moseley, the credit union’s vice president of marketing and communications, told Currents that the move is about creating convenience and keeping up “with the pace of what’s happening in the banking industry.”

“This is an opportunity to really provide a sleek new branch and update with a lot more of the modern facilities,” she added. “One of the things that’s so fantastic is the location offers more parking for everyone. It’s in a really great plaza with lots more conveniences for members.”

But members of the credit union who were banking at the downtown branch on Friday expressed shock and frustration about the move.

“It’s quite devastating,” said Margaret Slavin. “I don’t have a car. I’m a senior, so I’m not going to start commuting to banks that are way out on Lansdowne. This is the bank that I could get to.” Slavin said she has opened an account with CIBC and intends to leave Alterna. 

Jerome Ackhurst, owner of The Only Café on Hunter Street, said he has been banking at the Brock Street branch for more than 25 years. “I don’t like that it’s closing. I’m not going to the new branch,” he said. “That’s a fifteen minute drive from here. I think they’re going to lose a lot of customers.”

Alterna’s Peterborough branch goes by the name of Peterborough Community Savings. The branch is the successor of the Peterborough Community Credit Union, which operated at the Brock Street location for at least 50 years until it merged with Alterna in 2018. 

The Peterborough Community Credit Union’s board of directors voted for the merger in 2016. At the time, the credit union had 3,500 members, according to then-board president Beth Bruesch. “Our margins were slim,” Bruesch told Peterborough This Week at the time. “It didn’t make sense for things to stay as they were.”

Currents sought comment from officials at Peterborough Community Savings on Friday. But Carl Wittman, the branch’s security guard, said he was instructed not to allow our reporter into the building in an effort to protect members’ privacy. The branch’s assistant manager emerged briefly and directed questions to Alterna.

Over the phone, Moseley said bank tellers will no longer handle cash at the new location. But she said the credit union has “really invested in our digital and online platforms.”

“When we’ve walked them through the digital services, we found lots of our members actually, more than often, welcome the opportunity,” Moseley said. “We take the time and we always try to demonstrate the convenience in terms of how easy it is to use those services.”

But Wittman, the security guard, said many of the credit union’s members are “disappointed in the move because they live locally, in close proximity to the bank.”

Wittman’s contract with Alterna will terminate on September 30, he said. “I’ll just be going back to the security company and going somewhere else where I’m needed.”

Seeking answers as to why his credit union is moving, Mark Woolley reached out via the institution’s online chat feature in August. According to a screenshot he posted on social media, Woolley had a brief back and forth with a virtual agent before being connected with a human who answered his questions.

“The current branch building would require significant investment to keep it useful,” the online agent wrote to Woolley. “We also received significant feedback from members and employees expressing concerns related to the convenience and safety of the current branch, which was another factor driving the decision to move.”

Some credit union members doing their banking on Friday echoed those concerns to Currents.

“It kind of speaks to the way our city is going, especially our downtown core,” said Brandon McLean, a patron of the branch for eight years. “Everybody’s moving away from the downtown core to the outskirts where the roads are being fixed, there’s more policing being done, there’s less open air drug use,” he said.

But Margie Sumadh said moving the credit union out of the downtown isn’t the right solution to perceptions of lack of safety. “If you put up barriers, if you’re not in the community, then you’re not contributing to making it better. I think it’s a poor response and a lack of commitment to the community.”

Moseley said the decision to close the downtown branch has “not been an overnight process” and that the credit union is always “keeping a pulse on what’s happening in the community.”

But Sumadh said she wasn’t aware of any conversations about potentially moving the branch. “There’s been no discussion,” she said. “As far as I can see, it’s been done at the head office.”

“Credit unions are member-led,” Sumadh said. “This is more the action of a bank than a credit union.”