European Co-Operative Banks in 2024: A Concise Assessment

This snapshot presents the performance of 18 European co-operative banking groups on the one hand, and all their banking competitors on the other. In the first place, these co-operative banks welcomed 1.9 million new members in 2024. Their total membership now stands at more than 91 million members. In 2024, the member-to-population ratio reached an all-time high of 21.4. Full-time employment at co-operative banks rose by 2% in 2024, the strongest increase since 2011. Stricter compliance regulations seem particularly responsible for the staff increase in recent years. Additional calculations indicate that employment trends at co-operative banks are less volatile, suggesting they are more stable employers. Co-operative banks managed to stabilize their domestic markets shares at record levels. As in many previous years, loan growth at co-operative banks (2.9%) exceeded that of the banking sector as a whole (1.6%). Except for 2013 and 2024, deposits have also always grown at a faster pace at co-operative banks. Moreover, co-operative banks structurally operate with a significantly larger share of – stable – deposit financing than all other banks in terms of aggregated balance sheet total (52% versus 40% in 2024, respectively). Regarding key banking ratios, co-operative banks’ average Tier 1 ratio showed an upward jump of no less than one full percentage point to 19.1%, breaking the 2023 record. Their average return on equity remained high at 9.1%. Finally, their average cost-to-income ratio hit the lowest level in decades (52.2%).