Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVIDrelated research that is available on the COVID resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source.
Financial cooperatives play an important role in the financial systems of many countries. They act as a safe haven for deposits and are major sources of credit for households and small- and medium-sized firms. A not-for-profit orientation in many cases and a focus on maximising benefits to members have ensured the enduring popularity and sustainability of financial cooperatives.
This is particularly evident since the global financial crisis when financial cooperatives continued to extend credit to members as many profit-orientated commercial banks restricted credit to households and firms. The overarching theme of the first part of this review is the structural and behavioural characteristics of financial cooperatives. In this part we consider, the origin and diffusion of financial cooperatives, network arrangements, the business model, relationship banking, balancing the interest of members, tax treatment and regulatory framework.
The second part has performance and contribution to the real economy as the overarching theme. In this part we consider, efficiency and sustainability, mergers, acquisitions and failures, the benefits and challenges of FinTech and the contribution of financial cooperatives to the real economy including during times of crisis. The paper concludes with a summary of what we now know and do not know about financial cooperatives and provides suggestions as to where future research may usefully concentrate.
This paper reviews research on cooperative financial institutions in two parts. The theme of the first part is structural and behavioural characteristics of financial cooperatives. In the second part, the theme is performance and contribution to the real economy. Shinkin banks are also not-for-profit but restrict loans to members while accepting deposits from non-members.
