Non-commercial Financial Intermediaries as an Alternative for Commercial Banks in the Post-crisis Economy

The aim of the paper is to characterize and asses alternative (non-commercial) forms of financial activity: credit unions and social lending. Such institutions, in contrast to banking entities, are not focused solely on incomes, but try to achieve also other goals, often of social character and those which may be conducive to local community where the institutions operate. With reference to those agents/activities, there are described theoretical background of their functioning, their types, scale of activity in the EU countries and main features of those entities along with advantages and disadvantages of non-commercial financial intermediaries.