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Economic Commentary

The Credit Union Industry: An Overview

Credit unions play a crucial role in the U.S. financial industry, serving more than 68 million people. Although the percentage of assets under their control is dwarfed by that of commercial banks, credit unions have some unique characteristics and have evolved into increasingly competitive, customer-oriented providers of financial services. Their growth rate during this decade has been noteworthy: While commercial banks’ share of industry assets has declined, credit unions have experienced significant growth.

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Good, Barbara. 1996. “The Credit Union Industry: An Overview.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 5/15/1996.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International