 This advantage continued throughout the 1980s and emerged during a period (circa 1962 to 1977) in which the savings banks’ collaborative strategies evolved to reduce their competitive disadvantage relative to private commercial (i.e.full-service) banks.In this way, by the mid 1990s the co-operative mechanisms were sufficiently adapted to face market globalization, competition, ever-narrowing financial margins in banking and an accelerated pace in technological change.