PCU – helping officers with their finances

8 March 2021

A not-for-profit organisation that helps to secure the financial future of officers has produced its top tips to help improve a credit profile.

Serve and Protect, which includes Police Credit Union (PCU), has put together the factsheet in response to a large number of requests from its members.

The tips include staying up-to-date with your bills; avoiding short-term or payday loans and keeping within your overdraft limit.

Other tips include using credit cards responsibly, registering on the electoral roll and cancelling unused credit and store cards. Look at the tips. 

Serve and Protect, which also includes the Military, Prison, Fire and Health Credit Unions, serves more than 34,000 members – with 23,728 members from the police family, helping them save more than £60 million and with more than £25.5 million out on loan.

Officers and staff can benefit from a range of deals on their savings accounts, having paid a 1.2 per cent return on the easily accessible Regular Saver, it also offers a Junior Saver, which helps members to financially prepare for the future of their children or grandchildren.

And Derbyshire officers and staff will in the coming months be able to use salary deduction for Police Credit Union, which improves the chances of being approved a loan.

Meanwhile, Serve and Protect has published its Financial Resilience Report 2021, after surveying its members on their financial resilience – their ability to withstand life events that impact on their income and/or assets.

A total of 38 per cent of respondents said that following a change in circumstances such as relationship breakdown, unemployment, or sickness they wouldn’t be able to cope financially.

More than one in four (28 per cent) currently employed by a police force admitted they are worried about their current financial situation.

Almost a quarter (24 per cent) said they felt their personal finances have an impact on their ability to do your job effectively, while 27 per cent said the pandemic has had an impact on their household income.

See the survey results.

And Serve and Protect has also produced a guide for new recruits to the financial challenges they may face during their police career.

For new recruits, those challenges could be student loans or the cost of travel and living, while for serving officers they could be divorce or separation, holidays or home improvements.

Read the factsheet.