page_title: Credit union
hierarchical_section_title: Credit union
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a Coastal Federal Credit Union branch located on Creedmoor Road in Raleigh, NC.
context_page_description: 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.
  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. In 2018 the number of members in credit unions worldwide was 274 million, with nearly 40 million members being added since 2016.
  Commercial banks engaged in approximately five times more subprime lending relative to credit unions leading up to the financial crisis and were two and a half times more likely to fail during the crisis. American credit unions 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. In the US, public trust in credit unions stands at 60%, compared to 30% for big banks.
context_section_description: 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.
  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. In 2018 the number of members in credit unions worldwide was 274 million, with nearly 40 million members being added since 2016.
  Commercial banks engaged in approximately five times more subprime lending relative to credit unions leading up to the financial crisis and were two and a half times more likely to fail during the crisis. American credit unions 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. In the US, public trust in credit unions stands at 60%, compared to 30% for big banks. Furthermore, small businesses are eighty percent less likely to be dissatisfied with a credit union than with a big bank.
  "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.
caption: A branch of the Coastal Federal Credit Union in Raleigh, North Carolina
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