"Members will see the benefits and cost savings from this alliance straight away, in 2011," said Steve James, chief executive of the Sydney-based Teachers Credit Union.Teachers has announced an "alliance" with Victoria Teachers CU. Despite the upbeat language of the publicity material, savings are difficult to identify from the alliance.There will be no staff cuts and no systems integration in the short term. The two credit unions will retain their separate Sydney and Melbourne-based contact centres.However, options for bringing together the IT platforms in the future (both credit unions use the UltraData core banking system) and treasury functions are on the table for discussion. Neither party will rule out merger talks down the track.William Wolke, the CEO of Victoria Teachers CU, is less upbeat about the immediate prospects for significant savings."Members will benefit from better products coming to market quicker and long-term cost savings, as the two organisations will collaborate on joint projects in new product development, compliance and liquidity management."But we are absolutely retaining separate operations and all staff."Victorian teachers may even be able to walk into a Teachers Credit Union branch in Sydney or Perth and conduct transactions on their own accounts - one day."That is something we would like to explore," said Wolke. "But we are not really a branch-based operation. We have two branches; we do most of our business online or on the phone."The one immediate quantifiable cost saving identified by the CEOs is in IT sites."We will site our disaster recovery systems at each other's centres," said Steve James from the Sydney-based Teachers CU."That will save us $50,000 immediately in DR costs, I would think, and probably about the same saving for [Vic Teachers] too.