In recent decades, many credit unions began to resort to such form of service as 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. The main advantage of credit unions consists in transparency, controllability, governance for shareholders. As of the January 1, 2012 the national associations and confederations unite more than 196 million members participating in the 51,013 credit unions in 100 countries. The relationship between credit unions and shareholders arise from the membership and are not customer relationship. Credit unions, like today's credit unions, emerged in the 19th century in Germany as a result of crop failure and famine. Unlike banks credit unions limit their activities to a closed circle of people.