Estonia's Ministry of Finance has published a draft amendment package for savings and loan cooperatives (hoiu-laenuühistud) that would progressively restrict their ability to take deposits and ultimately require banking or cooperative bank authorisation, prudential supervision and deposit guarantee protection for deposit-taking activity. The planned three-stage entry into force would first ban the establishment of new cooperatives, prohibit advertising of deposit interest rates, and require higher share and joining fees for new members. In the second stage, cooperatives would be barred from signing new deposit contracts or extending existing ones, and lending to other financial institutions would be limited. In the final stage, each cooperative would need to decide by the start of 2027 how to continue, and from 2029 would have three routes: obtain a cooperative bank or bank licence to take deposits, bringing it under the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority and extending Guarantee Fund protection to deposits; continue as an ordinary cooperative without taking deposits but potentially offering payment services or consumer loans with the relevant Financial Supervision Authority licence; or cease cooperative activity. The Ministry frames the changes as necessary because cooperatives already operate in substance like banks by taking funds from individuals and lending them onward without financial supervision, and notes that several large cooperative bankruptcies have shown member oversight to be insufficient. The exact timetable for the phased commencement is to be determined during the Riigikogu legislative process.

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