| Abstract [eng] |
Master’s thesis presents theoretical aspects and practical situation of credit unions, their evaluation and comparison, also, expansion prognoses. Research relevance was supported with positive indicators of credit unions development, which dramatically increased during the past seven years, but relatively it took only 2% of financial market. Research problem is clear and obvious – low popularity of credit unions. Regarding high competition credit unions should increase comparative advantage among other financial institutions that provide credits and this could help to enhance customer loyalty and public image in society. Research object. Credit union activities and development opportunities in Lithuania. Work purpose - to analyze and evaluate operations of credit unions in Lithuania. Work tasks: 1. Theoretically analyze operations and activities of credit unions in Lithuania. 2. To do comparative analyses of credit unions operations. 3. To evaluate and justify credit unions development opportunities in Lithuania. Research hypothesis. Credit unions have development perspectives in Lithuania. Research methodology. According to various scientific articles there are many Lithuanian and foreign authors point of view implemented in this master’s thesis, also, scientific literature with official documents and statistical data is analyzed. Moreover, comparative analysis and multiple correlation regression analysis are applied to this work. It also presents collection, structuring and analyzing processes of data from Statistics Department, financial statements from Lithuanian Bank during 2006 – 2010, and credit institution reviews of 2005 – 2011 from Ministry of Finance. Research done by using databases, dictionaries ant information provided on other institutions’ websites. This scientific material that was collected structured and analyzed could be very beneficial not only for business and science representatives, but also for everyone who care about alternative ways of banking. Main research conclusions: Comparative analysis of banks and credit unions showed that credit unions had lower negative impacts on working results than banks during the economic downturn period. Besides, during 2010 - 2011 year economic recovery credit unions showed very optimistic results. Also, credit union assets depend on the number of credit union members and their deposits. Trust and loyalty of potential clients is the main aspet for credit unions developement. For this reason it is necessary to increase corporate bank popularity by using marketing strategies and positive government representative reviews and law amendment for credit unions. Master’s thesis consists of introduction, three sections, conclusions and references. Regarding scientific literature and legal acts that were used, there is an explanation of concept and activities af credit union in conceptual part. In the second part there is an overview of present macroeconomic situation of the country and situation of banks and credit unions during the period of past seven years. In analytic part is easy to find comparative analysis of banks and credit unions, also comparison of Lithuanian, Polish and Irish credit unions and their performance. Finally, Pearson correlation method helped to calculate developement perspectives for Lithuanian credit unions. |
