Title: Challenges for Credit and Banking Cooperatives

Credit and banking cooperatives are major financial inclusion and local economic resilience factors throughout the Asia-Pacific region. They provide low-cost financial services, help small businesses, and keep the communities empowered by their member-owned and democratically governed systems.

The rapidly changing financial sector presents these cooperatives with challenges including governance, regulation, capital adequacy, and digital transformation. Meeting such challenges while remaining true to cooperative identity calls for wise governance, innovation, and cooperation.

As part of the United Nations’ proclamation of 2025 as the IYC 2025 under the theme “Cooperatives Build a Better World,” the ICCB will host a roundtable to discuss and resolve emerging issues and share practical methods for making cooperative financial institutions stronger. The session will facilitate a dialogue among cooperative leaders, policymakers, regulators, and experts to trade ideas and map out and point to solutions that can be acted upon.

Sub-Themes

The roundtable will explore key challenges confronting cooperative financial institutions in the region. Building on discussions from the ICCB All-Members’ Meeting held on 28 August 2025, two interrelated sub-themes have been identified. These capture both the institutional and technological dimensions of cooperative growth, focusing on governance and access to credit on one hand, and digitalisation and innovation on the other.

Governance and Access to Credit

• Strengthening cooperative governance and compliance frameworks.
• Addressing regulatory barriers to financing and competitiveness.
• Ensuring cooperative identity and autonomy in an evolving financial environment.
• Learning from policy and institutional models that improved access to credit.

Digitalisation and Transformation

• Leveraging technology for inclusion, efficiency, and transparency.
• Managing risks related to cybersecurity, data privacy, and digital exclusion.
• Highlighting successful case studies in digital cooperative banking.
• Understanding regulatory and infrastructural enablers for digital innovation.

The objectives will be to:

• Examine governance and regulatory issues affecting access to credit for cooperatives.
• Discuss mechanisms to enhance accountability, resilience, and cooperative values.
• Explore the opportunities and risks of digital transformation in cooperative banking.
• Highlight innovations and partnerships that advance inclusive and sustainable finance.

Contribute to the IYC 2025 goal of demonstrating how cooperatives can build a more equitable and resilient financial future.