City Union Bank Website

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Admin
City Union Bank Website

City Union Bank Website

It all began in 1850’s Germany when Franz Herman Schulze-Delitzsch set out to “give those lacking access to financial services the opportunity to borrow from the savings pooled by themselves and their fellow members.” About the same time, another German, Freidrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, was promoting similar ideas in rural Germany.

By the mid 1860s a young Italian, Luigi Luzzalti had established the first Italian CU in Milan. It was to be almost a half century before the idea took hold in the USA and even longer before Ireland and mainland Britain followed suit. In fact, even today the movement has relatively low levels of participation in England although it is well established in the Republic of Ireland.

Credit Unions all Over the World

Thanks to the efforts of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) credit unions and co-operatives have formed a key element of economic development in emerging nations. By the late 1960s there were national associations of credit unions in countries all over the world and these had joined together to form the international credit union system that exists today. (Heritage, from the website of the World Council for Credit Unions, accessed 9-04-10)