The paper analyses the patterns of the performance of Lithuanian credit unions united under the Lithuanian Central Credit Union. A system of indicators describing the performance of the credit unions has been established in order to tackle the heterogeneity among the credit unions and asses its dynamics. The overlapping clustering was employed for the research. The research is based on data covering years 2008-2012. Such a framework enabled us to compare the performance of the credit unions amidst the economic turbulences fuelled by the global financial crisis. The overlapping clustering yielded the three groups of the credit unions comprising the unions featuring different levels of the performance efficiency. The results did indicate that the economic crisis altered the structure of these groups. Indeed, it was found out that the financial index (rating) assigned to the credit unions does not necessarily reflect the result obtained by tie multivariate statistical methodology.
Keywords: credit unions, performance efficiency, cluster analysis.
JEL Codes: G21, C38.
Scentific Publication: The patterns of the Lithuanian credit union performance (in Lithuanian language)