Today in the UK there are about 700 credit unions with assets exceeding 200 million pounds. When organizing the credit union it is important that people know each other and know the extent to which each of them is trustworthy. Credit union services are available only to its shareholders. The relationship of shareholders with credit union are not client-based, they are co-operative, based on different principles and standards, in particular, on the principles of the law of obligations. 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. 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. 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.