What is a Credit Union
A credit union is a member-owned financial cooperative, controlled by its members and operated on the principle of people helping people, providing its members credit at competitive rates as well as other financial services.[1][2]
Worldwide, credit union systems vary significantly in terms of total assets and average institution asset size, ranging from volunteer operations with a handful of members to institutions with assets worth several billion U.S. dollars and hundreds of thousands of members.[3] Credit unions operate alongside other mutuals and cooperatives engaging in cooperative banking, such as building societies.
"Natural-person credit unions" (also called "retail credit unions" or "consumer credit unions") serve individuals, as distinguished from "corporate credit unions", which serve other credit unions.[4][5][6]
Credit unions in the US had one-fifth the failure rate of other banks during the financial crisis of 2007–2008[7] and more than doubled lending to small businesses between 2008 and 2016, from $30 billion to $60 billion, while lending to small businesses overall during the same period declined by around $100 billion.[8] Public trust in credit unions stands at 60%, compared to 30% for big banks.[9] Furthermore, small businesses are eighty percent less likely to be dissatisfied with a credit union than with a big bank.[10]
