Credit unions
A credit union is a financial co-operative owned by its members. The members create the credit union and pool their money to run it as a mutually-beneficial financial community. Credit unions offer similar services to banks and building societies – like deposits, savings and loans – but, unlike banks, offer non-profit services to their members.
If your credit union goes out of business and is unable to pay back your savings, FSCS will step in to ensure you get your money back. We will automatically pay you compensation - you don’t need to do anything.
Credit unions
If the firm failed after January 2017
If you hold money with a UK-authorised credit union, bank or building society that fails, we’ll automatically compensate you.
- up to £85,000 per eligible person, per bank, building society or credit union.
- up to £170,000 for joint accounts.
We protect certain qualifying temporary high balances up to £1 million for 6 months from when the amount was first deposited.
You don’t need to do anything – FSCS will compensate you automatically.
Check how much of your money is protected by using our bank & savings protection checker.
Limitations
Where you hold your money could affect how much compensation you’re entitled to. If you have money in multiple accounts with a credit union, or banks that are part of the same banking group (and share a banking licence) we have to treat them as one. This means that our compensation limit applies to the total amount you hold across all these accounts, not to each separate account.
For our compensation limit to apply to each individual account, you’d need to hold money with different banks that don’t share a licence. You can search the financial services register on the Financial Conduct Authority’s website to see which banks share a licence or download this list of banks that share a license (pdf 0.3MB) from the Bank of England.
You can easily see how much of your money is protected by using our bank & savings protection checker - it also works for credit unions. Click the button to get started.