(August 25, 2015)
On a two-week trip to visit their credit union and cooperative bank counterparts around the U.S., leaders of Indian cooperative banks and the National Federation of State Cooperative Banks visited U.S. Co-ops headquarters this week.
During a discussion of the gap between financial sector co-ops and their non-financial counterparts, it became clear that getting cooperative capital into credit unions and cooperative banks is a common challenge for both countries.
“Co-ops need access to capital,” said Mike Beall, U.S. Co-ops president and CEO. Getting the co-op sector to choose credit unions over commercial banks not only supports cooperation among cooperatives (Cooperative Principle 6), but is beneficial for all, Beall said.
If non-financial co-ops shifted 50 percent of their deposits to credit unions rather than depositing in commercial banks over the next decade, the U.S. co-op sector has the potential to earn $2.2 billion more as a whole, according to a recent report by the Filene Research Institute.
The delegation also discussed youth perception of cooperatives and touched on the International Cooperative Alliance’s Blueprint for a Cooperative Decade.
U.S. Co-ops has a long history of cooperative work in India. The organization’s international work in the country began more than 60 years ago. In 1953, U.S. Co-ops responded to requests from cooperative leaders in India for assistance in strengthening their co-ops. U.S. Co-ops’s work had its most transformative impact in the dairy and fertilizer sectors, yielding two companies that are today among the world’s largest in their respective industries.