Serve & Protect Credit Union

Setting a course to improve the financial resilience of those who Serve and Protect.

Serve and Protect CU provides credit union services to the Police, Military, Prison, Fire and Health Service. They offer a range of flexible savings and affordable loans to public service employees. Serve and Protect has grown to over 33,000 members with the aim of preparing them for their financial future and educating young members on financial resilience and helping to provide peace of mind throughout their careers and beyond.

Formally the Police Credit Union, in 2018 it was decided to reposition the CU and to offer it's products to all those who serve and protect within the UK. To do this it needed to communicate and be able to speak to individual services and not just Police. Whilst the products are generic, the umbrella brand became Serve & Protect with the Police CU sitting alongside newly formed brands aimed at the Prison Service and the Military. Over the course of 18 months further CU brands were introduced for Fire and Health professionals to make a family of five and allow for further growth into other public service organisations.

What we did /

+ Brand Strategy
+ Brand development
+ Design for print
+ Signage
+ Digital
+ Marketing collateral

Results /

5,500

New members over two years.

The Strategy

At the outset we knew that the Police Credit Union's goal so to scale their offer to other public service organisations; the challenge was the mechanics of how that would work on a corporate level and importantly, that it made sense.

We started with a series of scoping meetings to discuss and explore different how this might work. Initially we devised a holding brand for the Police CU and planned a visual architecture that could easily be applied to other sectors. This was then rolled across to the Military and Prison Service.

The resulting look and feel were derived from understanding the ethos and nature of people who work within the public services. Their roles are dynamic and often involved some form of action based activities as they work to serve and protect the nation. We conducted a visual audit of the armed forces and the emergency services to ensure the aesthetic was familiar and 'in-tune' with the target audience. Nearly 18 months on from the initial work and rollout the Serve & Protect sub-brands have been further rolled out to the Fire Service and Health professionals. This has given them keenly targeted their services to a wider audience and is reaping huge benefits for their members.