 From 1939, CECA also helped to implement a ‘principle of territoriality’, through which savings banks' business was restricted to a single province.At the end of the 1980s all CECA members remained legally and functionally independent and, contrary to other European experiences, the alliance had not grown into a single franchise.Although each savings bank had an independent treasury department, the risk-diversification of the system meant that as a group, the savings banks’ cost of funds was as much as one per cent below that of commercial banks.