The World Council of Credit Unions (Woccu) has released its latest Statistical Report on the state of the global credit union sector.
The report shows a decrease in the overall number of credit unions as the trend of mergers and acquisitions continues.
Meanwhile, growth in membership and assets is slower than previous years, which Woccu attributes to improvements in its data collection.
The report shows that as of 31 December, 2024, there were 67,137 credit unions worldwide, down from 74,634 the previous year. The number of credit union members counted in the report increased by 0.4% to 412,681,905, while credit union assets rose by 2% to US$3.8tn.
The dip in the number of credit unions can be attributed to the ongoing trend of credit union consolidation, said Woccu, adding that mergers and acquisitions have reduced the number of credit unions to below 70,000 worldwide for the first time since 2016.
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Woccu’s director of member services, Thomas Belekevich, said the numbers on members and assets show “less of a ceiling and more of a reflection of how we’re improving our data collection”.
He added: “Over the years, Woccu has placed a greater emphasis on tightening our methodology to ensure the numbers that we’re publishing are verifiable and consistent across countries. And so, that means we’ve been more vigorous in identifying reliable data sources, and sometimes that means leaving out figures that can’t be substantiated.”
This work is part of a new Global Data Initiative, says Woccu, carried out in coordination with TruStage and the African Confederation of Cooperative Savings and Credit Associations.
The report also includes new data on credit unions, including global trends, demographics, regulatory supervision, strategic priorities, and risk concerns.
Regulation was cited as the greatest risk for respondents to the survey, and regulatory reform as the top strategic priority worldwide, with only 14% of respondents across all countries indicating that their credit unions are regulated by a credit-union–specific supervisory authority.
