Are they a group with all the advantages of a group, and thus some centralised elements? Or are they a collection of decentralised, more or less autonomous institutions that only swim in a shoal as long as there is something in it for them?
BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  I have to admit that I have always tended to regard savings banks as a collective. It seems to me that savings banks swim in a shoal out of conviction, which is a source of their strength – yet they have decentralised decision structures that almost border on a type of grass-roots democracy.