In the U.S., credit unions have a clear organizational structure. All credit unions belong to one or the other parent credit union (there are 35 of them in the U.S.). Today in the UK there are about 700 credit unions with assets exceeding 200 million pounds. Like the credit cooperatives, credit unions form associations of a higher level, which are called corporate credit unions. Credit union promotes the effective conservation of personal funds of its members, giving them the loans from the funds of the credit union, as well as the sharing of savings in education, housing, health care and other programs of social support and social development of its members. The main advantage of credit unions consists in transparency, controllability, governance for shareholders. Consumer loan and reliable savings - these are the main goals, which mean "natural persons" having decided to unite in credit consumer cooperative. Historically, credit unions have grown from the experience of credit cooperatives, but they took the experience of organizations of mutual aid of citizens by moving methods of social self-protection from labor and toward consumption.