The largest cooperative banks in Continental Europe: a sustainable model of banking

ABSTRACT

Cooperative banks perform a strong role in the EU economies and the banking sectors. In 2015, an Italian reform forced the Italian cooperative banks with assets higher than 8 billion euros to leave their mutual nature (one head one vote) and to transform into limited companies. The rationale underlying this law would support the idea that corporation is a superior banking model than the cooperative one, at least for larger banks. However, in many European countries (France, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, etc.), large cooperative banks still operate and represent leading banks in national and international economies. Using a sample of 253 European commercial banks, of which 68 cooperatives, from 8 European countries, where the cooperative model is important (as it was in Italy, before the reform), we found that in 2019 larger cooperative banks (i.e., with assets higher than 8 billion euros) have lower systematic and business risk, better asset quality, are more oriented to finance the local real economy as well as to satisfy their customers (borrowers and depositors) rather than their shareholders, in comparison with comparable non-cooperatives. In addition, they are more homogeneous among themselves and adopt a stable and recognizable business model, no matter if they differ in size. Therefore, more than 10 years after the 2008 crisis, they still represent a good model of financial sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperative business model
• European banks
• Financial sustainability
• ESG (environment, sustainability, governance)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of data and material

All relevant data are provided in this article. Source is BankFocus dataset.

Notes

1. Lancet report (Lancet 2017) underlined that, between 2000 and 2016, annual weather-related disasters worldwide rose by 46%, and between 2007 and 2016 economic losses from extreme weather worldwide rose by 86% (EUR 117 billion in 2016). This is a worrying trend, since close to 50% of the risk exposure of Euro area banks is directly or indirectly linked to risks stemming from climate change (Battiston et al. 2017). Other environmental issues are increasingly acknowledged to threaten current business models. For example, both biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and water scarcity, have been listed among the top ten global risks by World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Risk Report.