The History of People’s Credit Union

One of the constants about People's Credit Union over our 85 year history is that we’ve never changed our name. We’ve also never changed our commitment to our members, and have stayed true to the credit union philosophy of “people helping people.”

On February 1, 1922 seven people joined together to form what is now People's Credit Union. After six years the Credit Union already had more than 1,400 members with assets reaching $100,000 and by 1937 we had outgrown our original office and moved further up Thames Street to the former Savings Bank of Newport Building.

In 1960, we opened our first branch office in Middletown at Two Mile Corner and our expansion continued in 1963 when we merged with Jamestown Credit Union. In 1966 the Two Mile Corner branch was closed and reopened at our current headquarters location of 858 West Main Road, in the heart of Aquidneck Island.

In 1974 we began servicing the residents of Portsmouth and Island Park at our Park Avenue Branch. Between 1977 and 1978, People’s merged with both Tiverton Credit Union and Portsmouth Credit Unioin, further strengthening our presence in the area.

In the 1980’s we continued to expand and in 1981 merged with Newport Hospital Employees’ Federal Credit Union. In 1988 we moved into the Borden-Carey Building at Newport Hospital and also opened our downtown Bristol Branch at 555 Hope Street to better serve our members in the East Bay.

In 1992 we merged with the Rhode Island State Grange Credit Union in North Kingstown which led to the creation of our first branch in the West Bay. Our current North Kingstown office located on Post Road was opened in 1994. Four years later, two in-store supermarket branches were opened to serve the communities of Wakefield and East Greenwich. We expanded our Wakefield branch to its own freestanding building at our current location on Old Tower Hill Road, and closed the two in-store branches.

In 2007 we combined our Thames Street and Newport Hospital offices and opened our newest facility at 43 Memorial Blvd, providing an even more convenient and state-of-the-art branch for our Newport members. We look forward to continuing our history of providing the best possible service and facilities to our existing members while always keeping an eye towards future growth.