A cooperative is a common interest group exercising economic activities. A cooperative helps its members make their living, and members use its services. A cooperative is an open voluntary organization. A cooperative is member-driven democratic group of individuals. In the so called primary form of cooperation each member has one vote.
Operative surplus is divided among the members with respect to their service-usage rate.
In Finnish legislation the Act of Cooperatives from 1954 is a general law. It applies to all cooperative companies. In addition to this, cooperative banks are regulated by a specific statute. Only few sanctions are included in the 1954 Act. Discretionary regulations are used to make the cooperative by-laws flexible enough to ensure proper quality and extent of actions.