A credit union is a member-owned, member-controlled, not-for-profit cooperative financial institution formed to permit groups of persons to save, borrow, and obtain related financial services and to participate in its management. Member ownership and control are what make credit unions unique. In 1934, Congress passed the Federal Credit Union Act “to establish a Federal Credit Union System, to establish a further market for securities of the United States and to make more available to people of small means credit for provident purposes through a national system of cooperative credit, thereby helping to stabilize the credit structure of the United States.”