Partnerships are Inefficient… And That’s OK.
I recently had the opportunity to travel to Brazil with other credit union leaders to study the SiCredi cooperative financial system (what we in the U.S. would call a credit union or credit union system). They have a federated model much like Quebec-based Desjardins caisse popular (also a credit union system) with a centralized “home office” that can build expertise and scale, but is owned and governed by individual financial cooperatives each with their own individual governance models. In a sense it is like a super-franchise – a common brand but the “franchisees” own the entire system rather than the home office. SiCredi's president is a gracious man named Ademar Schardong who was instrumental in building the federated model in the 1980s as Brazil re-emerged from the military dictatorship that ruled the country since the 1960s. He spent a great deal of time with our study group explaining how their model works and their impressive growth trajectory in the last decade.