This case study report focusses on one European network: FEBEA, the European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks. FEBEA is a non-profit international association with educational aims registered in Belgium. Twenty-six European partners based across 14 European States were involved in setting it up. The members of the network have different legal forms: ethical banks and credit cooperatives, foundations and investment companies. The federation is currently in an expansion process aiming to increase the number of its members mainly through the creation of new socially responsible financial institutions in the European countries where they do not yet exist, also as a response to the recent demand to boost new alternative ethical banks in Europe, mainly in Eastern Europe (Croatia, Greece, and Slovenia).
In addition, this report examines two local manifestations: FIARE (Spain) and the Northwich Credit Unions (United Kingdom). FIARE, founded in 2003 in the Basque Country, is a non-profit private credit cooperative established throughout the whole of Spain. Almost 4.000 people and more than 350 organizations of all types (NGOs, cooperative federations, alternative and Solidarity Economy networks, trade unions, charities, municipalities) are members of FIARE, becoming “owners” of this new credit cooperative. Since 2005, the Spanish local manifestation, FIARE, became an associate of FEBEA, being currently a member of the board of the network. FIARE merged in 2013 with the Italian credit cooperative “Banca Popolare Etica”, creating “FIARE Banca Ética”, which became the first credit cooperative with two branches in two European countries.
The second local manifestation studied in this report is the Credit Union movement in Norwich. Three specific initiatives are covered, namely (1) Norwich Credit Union (NCU); (2) West Norwich Credit Union (WNCU); and (3) Wherry Dragon Credit Union (WDCU). This sample includes the main credit unions operating in Norwich today which meant the study was able to focus on these credit unions and the interactions between them over time. The three of them are members of ABCUL (Association of British Credit Unions Limited), which is the national association that represents credit unions in the UK and it is in turn a member of WOCCU (World Council of Credit Unions).
This document presents the main result of the study conducted on the European credit unions movement. Section 2 describes the research methodology which follows the guidelines established by Jørgensen et al (2014) for TRANSIT case studies (Batch 1). Section 3 covers the study on the European Network FEBEA. Section 4 presents the analysis of the Spanish local initiative FIARE, whilst section 5 presents research on the Norwich Credit Unions (UK). Finally, a synthesis chapter (section 6) gives a comparative analysis of the two local initiatives and of the relationships with the European network.
Dumitru, A., Lema-Blanco, I., García-Mira, R., Haxeltine, A. and Frances. A. (2015) WP4 : case study report : Credit Unions. TRANSIT: EU SSH.2013.3.2-1 Grant agreement no: 613169.
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