Credit unions encourage savings of citizens, setting compensation payments (interest) on savings and provide from these savings loans to their members. Since the early 80's started the process of consolidation of credit unions, leading to a decrease in their number with a simultaneous increase in the total number of members. 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. 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.