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. The main advantage of credit unions consists in transparency, controllability, governance for shareholders. Standards by which credit unions build their work do not coincide with the standards and regulations of consumer cooperation of the usual type. 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.