Helping with a new start.

Navigating a new country’s financial system is intimidating in the best of times. It is even more daunting when you arrive after being displaced from your homeland due to war or persecution. Vancity’s Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) is there to take one set of extra worries off newcomers’ plates.

Through the program, Vancity provides first-stop access to financial services, with opening a bank account an essential first step in building credit and safely managing money in a new country. But we also provide proactive advice and help build financial literacy, understanding, and trust in financial services — and in Vancity. And this is expertise we can mobilize at short notice, as we did in 2022 when displaced Ukrainians began arriving in BC.

We explain everything from using a debit and credit card to how to take out a loan and save for their child’s education.”

For many refugees and newcomers, Canada’s financial system is something new. “We explain everything from using a debit and credit card to how to take out a loan and save for their child’s education,” notes Arash Bahari, a Vancity employee who works directly with newcomers. “I moved here with my family in 1996 from Iran, and I know it can be scary trusting a stranger with such personal information.”

Since the 1990s, we’ve opened bank accounts for more than 12,000 refugees who transition through the Immigrant Services Society of BC (ISSofBC) and other settlement agencies. In 2022 alone, we opened more than 1,700 RAP accounts, for members coming mostly from Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. Our financial literacy documents, including the Vancity’s Banking in Canada guide, are now available in Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Ukrainian, Russian, and Spanish.

In 2022, we opened more than 1,700 RAP accounts, for members coming mostly from Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine.

For Vancity, this is not only about being welcoming and providing an essential service to those who need it. “Being members’ best financial partner means establishing a relationship and building trust,” says Claudia Esposito, the employee who has signed the most RAP accounts for Vancity in 2022. “Those who I’ve signed up as members stay in touch and let me know how they’re doing.”