Does Panama Have Credit Unions?

Does Panama have credit unions?

The short answer is no.

The medium answer is kind of.

The long answer is that Panama has cooperativas (cooperatives), member-owned, democratically governed organizations created to provide goods or services to its members, who are also its owners. Cooperatives are legally recognized entities regulated under Law 17 of 1997 and overseen by the Instituto Panameño Autónomo Cooperativo (IPACOOP), the government agency responsible for promoting, supervising, and auditing them.

Cooperativas de Ahorro y Crédito (Savings and Credit Cooperatives) are the most common and economically significant type of cooperatives in Panama. They function similarly to credit unions or community banks, but are nonprofit and member-controlled.

Anyone who meets the cooperative’s criteria (for example, being part of a certain community, workplace, or profession) can become a member by purchasing a small number of cooperative shares (called aportes). Each member is an owner and has one vote in the General Assembly, regardless of how many shares they hold. Major decisions, such as electing the board of directors or approving annual budgets, are made collectively.

The goal of the cooperative is not to maximize profit, but to promote financial inclusion, encourage savings, and provide affordable services to members, such as: savings accounts (ahorros ordinarios and ahorros a plazo fijo); personal, education, and business loans; mortgages; and insurance products (sometimes through partner institutions). Any excess income after covering expenses is redistributed among members as retornos (returns), based on their participation (how much they saved or borrowed), or reinvested in the cooperative’s growth and community projects.

The biggest difference between American credit unions and Panamanian cooperatives is that American credit unions are better integrated into the national banking infrastructure and heavily insured. Panamanian cooperatives are not part of the national payment system (e.g. ACH, Visa networks) unless they partner with a bank. Additionally, cooperatives don’t have a national deposit insurance equivalent of the American FDIC; instead, IPACOOP supervises and requires reserves.

So can you join one? Technically, yes, but you'd have to fit their narrow criteria for membership and, I mean, I can't imagine how an expat would benefit from joining one without a very specific reason. So, practically, no.