Resumen
The financial crisis in recent years is having a significant impact on the Spanish banking sector and particularly in Spanish credit cooperatives. In this scenario, as happens in the savings banks and banks, credit unions are immersed in important movements of cooperation, mergers and external growth, in order to guarantee their long-term survival. In this context, this paper proposes a method of grouping of Spanish credit cooperatives based on cluster analysis with the aim to value the opportunity to join one or other of the Institution of Protection System (IPS) currently considered in the Spanish context, and attending to different aspects of its strategy, commercial and social innovation.The results of analyzes carried on data from Spanish credit cooperatives for the period 1999-2009, which show the convenience of credit unions have similar strategies to the reference entity in the IPS are integrated.