Historically, credit unions were preceded by widespread development of credit cooperation in many countries of Europe and America. Like any financial institution, credit unions have the financial resources. Like the credit cooperatives, credit unions form associations of a higher level, which are called corporate credit unions. Specialization of credit unions to provide financial services to its shareholders requires a particularly strict regulation of membership and acceptable activities. 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. Income derived from the provision of services to its members, does not become the profit of credit union and is distributed among its members in proportion to their 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. Credit unions are financial institutions, financial cooperatives of citizens, and in this capacity they are above all associations of people, not unification of capitals, which is typical, for example, for public companies. Credit cooperatives and credit unions exist in many different forms. The main differences relate to the nature of the membership and the opening of a credit institution.