Cooperative banks are hugely important in Finland, with a combined market share of over one-third, one of the highest in Europe. The cooperative banking sector in the country was shaken up in the 1990s, when a minority of banks split from the central cooperative banking group, OP Group. They formed their own competing cooperative banking […]

The Dominican Republic occupies half a Caribbean island— 48,442—square kilometers, and is home to 10 million people. Everyone in the Dominican knows everyone else and word of mouth goes a long way. For 61 years people have been talking about Cooperativa San José, Inc. They have also been entrusting their money to the credit union. […]

Malki Lom is an agricultural cooperative in Sadina, a village with 1,000 inhabitants in Northern Bulgaria. The cooperative, named after the nearby river, was established in 1993, at a time when no bank was willing to provide it with funding. The situation improved in 2000 when Tihomir Todorov was elected chairman. In 2002 Malki Lom […]

It was a rural schoolteacher, Alejandro Rodríguez, who first raised the idea of a social institution in Costa Rica. The year was 1920 and the country was fresh from the unhappy reign of military dictator General Federico Tinoco Granados. After Granados was overthrown, the unpopularity of his regime led to a considerable decline in the […]

Throughout the past decade The Co-operators Group Limited’s television commercials have highlighted various core brand attributes of the organization such as caring, trustworthy, honest, friendly, community-minded, etc. In It’s in Our Name they highlight the fact that The Co-operators is a co-operative using that as a foundation for what differentiates The Co-operators from its competitors […]