sentences:  In 1878 a network of ‘people’s banks’ formed the Groupe Banque Populaire, and four years later the first credit union in the system now known as Crédit Mutuel was formed in Wantzenau, near Strasbourg.In 1883 Leone Wollemborg, the ‘Raiffeisen’ of Italy, formed the first casse rurali in Loreggia.Credit unions also spread to Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, the Netherlands and the Balkans by the 1890s.