Global Presence
Based on data from the World Council of Credit Unions, at the end of 2010 there were 52,945 credit unions in 100 countries around the world. Collectively they served 188 million members and oversaw US $1.5 trillion in assets. The World Council does not include data from co-operative banks, so, for example, some countries generally seen as the pioneers of credit unionism, such as Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy, are not included in their data. The European Association of Co-operative Banks reported 38 million members in those four countries at the end of 2010.
The countries with the most credit union activity are highly diverse. According to the World Council, the countries with the greatest number of credit union members were the United States (92 million), India (20 million), Canada (11 million), South Korea (5.6 million), Kenya and Brazil (3.9 million each), Thailand (3.6 million), Australia 3.4 million, Ireland (3.0 million), and Mexico (2.6 million).
The countries with the highest percentage of credit union members in the economically active population were Ireland (75%), Barbados (72%), St. Lucia (67%), Belize (65%), Grenada (59%), Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica (54% each), Canada (46%), Antigua & Barbuda (45%), and the United States (44%). Several African and Latin American countries also have high credit union membership rates, as does Australia. The average percentage for all countries considered in the report is 7.5%
Credit unions were launched in 1992 in Poland, and as of 2012 there were 2,000 credit union branches there with 2.2 million members.
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