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The head office of the Co-operative Bank (UK) in Manchester, England. The statue in front is of Robert Owen, a pioneer in the Co-operative movement.

Cooperative banks, also called Mutual savings and loans, exist in most parts of the world. They offer financial services on a cooperative basis.

Like credit unions cooperative banks are banks owned by their customers based on the cooperative principle of one person, one vote. However, cooperative banks are usually regulated under both banking and cooperative legislation.

Cooperative banking systems are also usually more integrated than credit union systems. Local branches of cooperative banks elect their own boards of directors and manage their own operations, but most strategic decisions require approval from the central office. Credit unions usually retain strategic decision-making at a local level, though they share 'back-office' functions like access to the global payments system by federating.

In North America, the caisse populaire movement started by Alphonse Desjardins in Quebec, Canada pioneered credit unions. Desjardins wanted to bring desperately needed financial protection to working people. In 1900, from his home in Lévis, Quebec, he opened North America's first credit union, marking the beginning of the Mouvement Desjardins.

While they have not taken root so deeply as in Ireland : ( Irish League of Credit Unions) or the USA, credit unions are also established in the UK. The largest are work or community based, many are now offering many banking services including from November 2006 Debit Card accounts. The Association of British Credit Unions Ltd - ABCUL - represents the majority of British Credit Unions.

British Building Societies developed into general-purpose savings & banking institutions with "one member, one vote" ownership and can be seen as a form of financial cooperative (although many 'de-mutualised' into conventionally-owned banks in the 1980s & 1990s). The UK Co-operative Group includes both an insurance provider CIS and the Co-operative Bank, both noted for promoting ethical investment.

Other important European cooperative bank systems include the Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel, Banque Populaire and Caisse d'épargne in France, Rabobank in the Netherlands, BVR/DZ Bank in Germany, Migros and Coop Bank in Switzerland and the Raiffeisen system in many Central and Eastern European countries. Spain, Austria, Italy and other European countries also have strong cooperative banks. They play an important part in mortgage credit and professional (i.e. farming, small businesss...) credit. The cooperative banks which are members of the European Association of Co-operative Banks report 130 million customers, $4 trillion euros in assets, and 17% of Europe's deposits.

Cooperative banking networks, which were nationalized in Eastern Europe, work now as real cooperative institutions. A remarkable development has taken place in Poland, where the SKOK (Spółdzielcze Kasy Oszczędnościowo-Kredytowe) network has grown to serve over 1 million members via 13,000 branches, and is larger than the country’s largest conventional bank.

In Scandinavia, there is a clear distinction between mutual savings banks (Sparbank) and true credit unions (Andelsbank).

The more recent phenomena of Microcredit and microfinance are often based on a cooperative model and were first developed in third world countries, but are quickly spreading to the rest of the world. They focus on small business lending. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh won the Nobel Peace Prize for his development and pursuit of the microcredit concept.

The International Co-operative Banking Alliance http://ica.coop/icba/index.html (a sectoral organization of the International Co-operative Alliance

The European Association of Co-operative Banks http://www.eurocoopbanks.coop/

• Building society
• Credit union
• Savings and loan association
• Mutual savings bank