Resilience in a Downturn: The power of financial cooperatives

In analysing their performance in the crisis, the report shows that financial cooperatives have continued to provide banking services to people on low incomes, to stabilize the banking system, to regenerate local economies and, indirectly, to create employment. The report explains that cooperatives are able to do this because of their unique combination of member ownership, control and benefit. It concludes with a set of policy recommendations for governments, development agencies and other policy-makers, for instance using cooperatives not as “conduits” but as partners in the wider aims of business development, insurance against episodic poverty and decent work.