Historically, credit unions were preceded by widespread development of credit cooperation in many countries of Europe and America. Most modern credit unions represent specialized consumer cooperatives of citizens associated by the principle of social community: place of work, place of residence, profession, or any other shared interest. Specialization of credit unions to provide financial services to its shareholders requires a particularly strict regulation of membership and acceptable activities. Typically new members of the credit union become citizens having suretyship or recommendations from their friends - members of the credit union. National Credit Union Insurance Fund was created by Congress in 1970 to insure deposits of credit union members in the amount of 100 thousand dollars. Taking a decision to join a credit union, citizens create an organization through which they participate in the shared savings by mutual crediting and joint (collective) use of personal savings. The relationship between credit unions and shareholders arise from the membership and are not customer relationship. Shareholders in corporate organizations are basic credit unions, besides the same union can be a shareholder of several corporate organizations. U.S. credit unions have another significant difference from the credit cooperatives of farmers: the first have major proportion of short-term loans, the second - long and mostly in real estate.